Rebuilding Urban Japan after 1945 (review)

It has long been a safe justification for studies on Japanese city planning to suggest that there is a dearth of research about the role of the state in shaping urban growth and change in Japan, as there are still only a very few books on Japanese cities and urban management.¹ This volume thus contributes significantly to the literature by gathering together a solid body of research on one critical period of urban building, the postwar reconstruction of Japanese cities destroyed by bombing during the final years of the war. The book is well conceived and organized, with a nice balance of thematic and case study chapters.

The postwar reconstruction is a pivotal moment in the development of Japanese cities, and through a detailed examination of this period of major change in urban governance and planning, this volume illuminates two distinct periods of Japanese urban management. First, the immediate postwar period of reconstruction yields important insights into the prewar system of planning and urban management, as the failure of efforts at planning reform discussed by Ishida in chapter two meant that the prewar system remained largely intact, and many of the key players retained their posts from the early 1930s until well after the occupation had ended (p. 239). The critique of the prewar planning system implicit in the reform efforts and the various shortcomings of the reconstruction efforts detailed in several chapters offer insights into the major planning issues of the time and the thinking of many of the key actors involved. Second, by analyzing in detail the approach to reconstruction, the impacts on Japanese urban governance wrought by occupation reforms, and the outcomes in several case study cities, the volume provides a solid foundation with which to understand and study the postwar development of Japanese urban planning and governance.

The introductory chapter by Carola Hein briefly sets out the context of postwar urban reconstruction, noting that the vast extent of damage and the resulting housing shortage and economic decline at the end of the war created pressure for a pragmatic and quick approach to rebuilding rather than ambitious ideas for urban restructuring. Hein also usefully discusses the inherent challenges of postwar rebuilding and compares the situation in Japan with that in several European countries, suggesting that diverse concepts of rebuilding reflected whether the country was victorious or defeated, and also could be deeply symbolic of national self-image and priorities. Poland, for instance, rebuilt central Warsaw as it had been by carefully recreating historic elements, while many German cities were rebuilt as a repudiation of Nazi urban ideas and plans.

This is followed by an excellent chapter by Ishida Yorifusa that covers three main topics. First, it sets out the context of city rebuilding efforts in the immediate postwar period: the massive destruction, desperate economic situation, food and housing shortages, and the influence of the American occupation forces. He then provides a brief overview of the politics of central government approaches to reconstruction and finally examines the draft revisions to the Building Act in 1946, the City Planning Act in 1952, and the Building Land Act in 1947. This detailed examination of draft revisions to planning law is interesting, as it makes clear the sophistication of the planning bureaucrats as well as their relative political weakness, lacking any significant base of support for their ideas. Ishida argues that the failure to pass these long-discussed reforms was a major contributor to the later problems in postwar urban management examined in his many other works on planning history.

This foundation is followed by case studies with a nice balance of larger and smaller cities in diverse regions, starting with Tokyo (Ichikawa Hiroo) and Osaka (Hasegawa Junichi), the special case of atom-bombed Hiroshima (Ishimaru Norioki), the small city of Nagaoka in Niigata (Matsumoto Shōji), and Naha in Okinawa (Ikeda Takayuki). Next are three thematic chapters on Japanese planning in its prewar colonies and its important impacts on planning ideas...