Tokyo Rising

4 ideas

1. Earthquake and firebombing both gutted the Low City

   The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1 September 1923 struck at midday as cooking fires burned. The fires it set killed far more people than the shaking, including a firestorm that killed tens of thousands who had fled to the open ground of the Honjo Clothing Depot. On the night of 9–10 March 1945, American incendiary raids burned the same eastern plebeian districts and killed on the order of 100,000 people, so the old merchant-and-artisan Low City was destroyed twice within one generation.

2. Catastrophe accelerates trends rather than creating them

   The earthquake did not invent Tokyo's westward drift toward the High City and the suburbs along the private rail lines. It sped up a migration of people, money and fashion that was already under way. Disasters work as accelerants: they destroy the fabric that was holding back change and let the existing direction of growth win faster.

3. Grand rebuilding plans lose to property lines

   After 1923, Gotō Shinpei's ambitious plan for broad avenues and parks was cut back sharply by budget politics and landowner resistance. After 1945, Tokyo again rebuilt largely on its old plots with little comprehensive planning. A clean slate made by disaster is an illusion, because ownership claims, fiscal limits and the urgency of rehousing people reassert the old pattern before any master plan can be imposed.

4. Low City versus High City cultural geography

   Read Tokyo as two cities. The Shitamachi was the low-lying eastern Low City of merchants, artisans, canals and Edo popular culture. The Yamanote was the western High City of officials, samurai heirs and later the salaried middle class.

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