Transience and Durability in Japanese Urban Space
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Durham E-Theses Transience and durability in Japanese urban space ROBINSON, WILFRED,IAIN,THOMAS How to cite: ROBINSON, WILFRED,IAIN,THOMAS (2010) Transience and durability in Japanese urban space, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/405/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk Iain Robinson Transience and durability in Japanese urban space ABSTRACT The thesis addresses the research question “What is transient and what endures within Japanese urban space” by taking the material constructed form of one Japanese city as a primary text and object of analysis. Chiba-shi is a port and administrative centre in southern Kanto, the largest city in the eastern part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Region and located about forty kilometres from downtown Tokyo. The study privileges the role of process as a theoretical basis for exploring the dynamics of the production and transformation of urban space. Three aspects of temporal experience identified by Giddens – routine, biographical and institutional time – are adopted as a framework for considering how the dynamics of social reproduction are expressed in terms of transience and durability within urban form. A methodology is developed to explore the changing interrelationship between six conceptual ‘entities’ – the individual, household, dwelling, establishment, premises and site. Metrics are identified for each to facilitate a consistent analysis over time of the changing relationship between these based on a formal diachronic longitudinal survey. An analysis of the spatial transformation of the material form of the city between 1870 and 2005 was completed based primarily on recording the changing use over time of about 4,500 sample points. The outcome of the study is presented in five substantive chapters. The first considers characteristics of the layout of neighbourhoods and dwellings that have endured largely through their close association with processes of social reproduction. The following four chapters examine chronologically the evolution of the city, documenting transformations in urban form and their expression in terms of changing use of volumes of space, the characteristic infrastructure, premises and dwelling types, and how these relate to broader trends in Japanese history. The final chapter summarises the interrelationship of these transformations and draws some conclusions concerning what promotes transience and durability in an urban environment. Transience and durability in Japanese urban space Iain Robinson Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Department of Geography University of Durham Science Laboratories, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, United Kingdom 2010 ii Copyright © 2010 Iain Robinson All rights reserved iii Sono aruji to sumika to mujō o arasou sama. Iwaba asagao no tsuyu ni kotonarazu? Both men and their dwellings are as transient as the dew on ‘Morning Glory’ blossoms. And who can tell which of them will endure the longer? Kamo no Chōmei (c.1212) iv Table of Contents Preface vi Acknowledgements viii List of Abbreviations x Prologue xi 1. Introduction 1 2. Process as a Perspective 15 3. Methodology 53 4. Continuity in Urban Space 88 5. Urban Space in a Modernising State: 1868 to 1945 109 6. Reconstruction and Recovery: 1945 to 1960 151 7. All a matter of economic policy? Expansion 1960 to 1975 178 8. Deregulation, Boom and Bubble: 1975 to 1990 232 9. The 'Lost Decade' and after: 1990 to 2005 275 10. The enduring, the transient and processes of change 310 Appendix 1: Sample Point Survey and Database design 342 Appendix 2. Japanese Terms 351 Appendix 3. Japanese Terms for administrative areas 353 Photographic Credits 358 Bibliography 359 v Preface This study is concerned with patterns and mechanisms of change. It addresses three broad questions associated with the production and function of urban space: how and why are the processes that constitute the basis of routine urban life transformed over time, how are the consequences of this transformation reflected within the built environment, and what aspects of the production and use of urban space might be regarded as persistently enduring? These topics will be explored in the context of the city of Chiba in the Kanto region of Japan. The context of this study is unconventional. Most theses are written at the outset of academic careers but this is a product, if not exactly of the author’s ‘old age’, then at least of his mature years. In 2002 I retired from a market research and database management career in a United Kingdom company and made a new home in a rural area of Chiba Prefecture east of Tokyo. My aspiration in retirement was to undertake some original academic research into aspects of contemporary urban Japan, and this study was intended to serve as a preliminary ‘road map’ to enable me to acquire a broad understanding of the field. What interests me about Japanese cities is their sheer difference, the contrasts that have emerged in the production of modern urban spaces within another historical and social context. The scope of the research was deliberately broad, the intention always to produce an extensive piece of work. Several of the topics addressed in this text could have formed the basis for a substantial thesis in their own right, and I have often had to deal only briefly with issues that would warrant much more extensive treatment. I also wanted to use the opportunity of this study to consider the value of process based categories in understanding the experience of transience. I have a strong personal sense of the restless dynamics of transformation in progress in my awareness of place and this has influenced the theoretical context of the work presented here. Becoming a greying flâneur for the first time and starting to explore the danchi, roji and malls of Chiba-shi , I was in the unusual position for a postgraduate student of knowing almost nothing about the chosen object of my study. This made me focus vi very directly on observation. I concentrated at the beginning on simply walking the city in detail and asking questions about everything I saw. This later evolved into a methodology in which formally sampling the changing use of space within the built environment was central. This too involved a lot of walking - around thirteen hundred kilometres in total. Because the character of this effort is not apparent from the ‘dry bones’ of the many tables it produced for the main text I have briefly sketched the essence of the daily routine involved in the short prologue on page xi. So this is very much a study taken from engagement with and experience of the space of the city. It is also, I now realise looking at the result of six years part-time research, a study that reflects my love of numbers. Iain Robinson 3 March 2010 vii Acknowledgements When I embarked on this project I had no appreciation of the amount of effort it would encompass within the six years permitted for part time study, nor of the extent to which my personal life would concurrently be transformed through living in a completely different culture. I could never have brought the project to a conclusion without the help and support of many people. Firstly I want to thank my supervisors at Durham, Dr. Gordon MacLeod and Professor Stuart Elden, and also for one year Dr. Kurt Iveson, for helping a ‘mature student’ from a different academic generation return to serious formal study. It is no exaggeration to say that, in best Rip Van Winkle tradition, I scarcely recognised the discipline of Geography after an absence of more than thirty years. Without their unstinting support, guidance and encouragement I would neither have managed to reorient myself in respect of appreciating some key current debates within geography, nor positioned my own research meaningfully within the context of urban studies. They have also greatly helped me by always being supportive within the kind of flexible supervision regime that pursuing part time study on the other side of the world entailed. I would also like to acknowledge the encouragement and help I have received from many other academic staff both in the UK and in Japan. Professor Yamamura Junji of the Department of Geography within the University of Chiba School of Social Studies gave me some early help with orientation and early introductions, and towards the end of my studies Professor John Creighton Campbell, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan School of Political Science and Visiting Professor at the Department of Health Policy and Management at Keio University Medical School, gave me an opportunity to meet many American and European postgraduates working on Japanese topics, and to present my own work, through attending his impromptu monthly sessions at the University of Tokyo. I also had some very valuable initial technical guidance from Dr. Ian Evans at Durham which helped determine the sampling procedure I adopted for my sample point survey. viii I received frequent help from staff in the Chiba Prefectural and City Library reference sections and the Chiba City Planning Department and Statistics Office documentation reference library.