DEVELOPMENT OF TOKYO

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27407, 21 July 1954, Page 6

DEVELOPMENT OF TOKYO

Population Put At 7,669,000 (From a Reuter Correspondent) , TOKYO. Tokyo will soon be the world’s biggest metropolitan area—and does not know quite what to do about it. The 500-year-old capital already sprawls over more than 2000 square kilometres, but still has insufficient space for a population growing at the rate of more than 300,000 a year. There is not enough space, not enough water, not enough roadway, and in only one small inner-city area is there any modern sewage disposal. In the whole metropolitan area a city government survey reported 7,669,000 persons this year. The present average population increase vill bring this to 8,628,000 in 1957, the five-nundredth anniversary of the building of the first organised fortification centre on this site. In the inner area alone the official figure for the population now is 6,672,000. This is expected to become 8,551,000 in 1961, and in the whole metropolitan area the population then will be 9.772,000. Although the two areas are contiguous, these totals exclude the population of Yokohama where, in the city and port area alone, there are another 1,000,000 people, not physically separated from Tokyo. Tokyo is now a combined city and prefecture, with a governor elected every four years, ana under him two vice-governors, divisional chiefs and a municipal staff of 50,000. He works with an elected assembly of 120 members, also elected for four-year terms. This organisation, now spending nearly 82.000,000,000 yen every year (about £82,000,000) on administration is also in the middle of a five-year plan started in 1952 requiring the expenditure of more than 114,000,000,000 ven (about £114,000,000). A 15-point list of projects within this plan includes road-building, harbour works, and social welfare.

The Tokyo government’s account of the city’s history says that in 1457 a local leader saw the possibilities of the site, then a spreading wilderness of swamp and low hills beside the tidal mud-flats of Tokyo harbour. A strong castle was built where Japan’s Imperial Palace now stands behind its winding moats and high stone walls. A governor was formally appointed for the area and Tokyo was on the way to make world records. The first, little known now and unknown then to the outside world, was a population record as early as 1721. Then, as Edo, a Shogunate capital, Tokyo had a population of about 1,500,000. No other large city had a population exceeding 1,000,000 before the industrial revolution.