Japanese Cities

by Kuniko Fujita

Overview

Japan is the world's second most powerful economy and one of the most urbanized nations on earth. Yet English-language literature contains remarkable little about cities in Japan. This collection of original essays on Japanese urban and industrial development covers a broad spectrum of city experiences. Leading Japanese and Western urbanists analyze Japan's largest metropolitan areas (Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya); proto-typical industrial cities (Kamaishi, Kitakyushu, Toyota); high technology urban satellites (Kanagawa); and smaller, more traditionally organized industrial districts (Tsubame). This book demonstrates how Japan's flexible economic growth strategies and changing relationship to the world economy have produced a uniquely Japanese pattern of urban development in this century.

Throughout the essays that describe individual cities, contributors provide commentary on each city's twentieth-century history and functional relations with other cities and focus on the dynamic linkage between global relations and local activities. They examine the role of government—central, prefectural, and local—in the restructuring of Japanese industrial and urban life. One essay is devoted to the urbanization process in pre-World War II Japan; another considers urban planning on the western Pacific Rim. This is the first book that analyzes how the economic transformation of Japan has restructured Japanese cities and how urban and regional development policies have kept pace with (and in some ways effected) changes in the economy.

This comprehensive study of Japanese cities provides interdisciplinary coverage of urban development issues of interest to the fields of economics, business, sociology, political science, history, Asian and Japanese studies, and urban planning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439900925
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	01/28/2009
Series:	Conflicts In Urban & Regional
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	323
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Kuniko Fujita is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University.

Richard Child Hill is Professor of Sociology and Urban Affairs at Michigan State University and co-author of Detroit: Race and Uneven Development (Temple).

 

Contributors: Mike Douglass, Tadao Kiyonari, Kenichi Miyamoto, Yasuo Miyakawa, Hachiro Nakamura, Mamoru Obayashi, Peter J. Rimmer, Philip Shapira, Masatoshi Yorimitsu, and the editors.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Part I: Introduction
1. Japanese Cities in the World Economy – Richard Child Hill and Kuniko Fujita
2. Urban Growth in Prewar Japan – Hachiro Nakamura

Part II: World City Formation
3. Japan's World Cities: Osaka and Tokyo Compared – Kenichi Miyamoto
4. The "New" Tokyo Story: Restructuring Space and the Struggle for Place in a World City – Mike Douglass
5. Kanagawa: Japan's Brain Center – Mamoru Obayashi
6. Restructuring Urban-Industrial Links in Greater Tokyo: Small Producers' Responses to Changing World Markets – Tadao Kiyonari

Part III: Global-Local Links
7. Nagoya: The Core of Japan's Global Manufacturing Industries – Yasuo Miyakawa
8. Toyota City: Industrial Organization and the Local State in Japan – Kuniko Fujita and Richard Child Hill

Part IV: Declining Industrial Cities and Policy Responses
9. The Declining Steel Town and Its Renaissance: The Case of Kamaishi – Masatoshi Yorimitsu
10. Steel Town to Space World: Restructuring and Adjustment in Kitakyushu City – Philip Shapira

Part V: Japan and the World
11. Reshaping Western Pacific Rim Cities: Exporting Japanese Planning Ideas – Peter J. Rimmer
12. Global Interdependence and Urban Restructuring in Japan – Richard Child Hill and Kuniko Fujita

About the Contributors
Index