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15 In the new wave of investments triggered by World War One, the focus of Japan’s economic expectations shifted from the nation to the city, where the capitalist revolution’s deepening impact was most dramatically felt. Sudden and rapid urban growth stretched the capabilities of city services and strained the seams of the built environment. The war boom propelled new groups to positions of social prominence, swelling the ranks of the new middle and working classes. Though prosperity proved evanescent, the possibility of gaining fabulous wealth in a short period of time was etched in popular memory as a feature of the urban economy, one dimension of the economic and social volatility of modern economic growth. The war years marked the eruption of a new level of crowd violence, on the factory floor and especially in the street, as rice riots broke out in cities throughout the country. Thus, World War One inscribed the image of the city with a new economic and social identity: one associated with an explosive pace of change, with instability , and with the specter of intensified social violence. Such visions of the city stood in contrast to older urban imaginaries. The feudal concept of the castle town, burnished over three centuries of political stability under Tokugawa rule, envisioned the city as a monument to the enduring power of the military elite. Tokugawa policies concentrated the ruling caste of samurai in the cities, where they constituted as much as 40 percent of the population. The remaining urban population of artisans and merchants supplied the needs and wants of the samurai.1 Organized as instruments of samurai rule, cities became seats of higher learning and administration, which Tokugawa law defined as the exclusive province of the samurai. With the overthrow of the Tokugawa regime, samurai dominance of the city ended and the myth of samurai permanence was shattered. In the O N E World War One and the City Idea 16 • C O N T E X T S urban reconstructions of the 1870s and 1880s a new vision emerged of the city as instrument of progress and modernity. Exemplified in the remaking of central Tokyo and the famous Ginza brick town, and in the new government buildings that shot up throughout the country, the urban reconstructions of the early Meiji period telegraphed a message to foreigners and Japanese alike about the city as symbol of Japan’s capacity for civilization and enlightenment . And though this urban imaginary embraced a sense of managed progress and controlled change, it little prepared people for the tumultuous transformations of the First World War.2 Examining the different ways in which World War One catalyzed urban change, this chapter takes up the following questions: Why did a discourse on the modern emerge with such peculiar force in the wake of World War One? What touched off the extended reflection on the newness of everyday life? To understand the intensity and volume of this intellectual production, the pages that follow canvass the impact of the war years on the urban economy , the built environment of the city, and urban society to show why these issues began to register so dramatically in the consciousness of urban residents. T H E E C O N O M I C B O O M Though of minimal significance for Japan militarily, World War One was the third of a series of wars that stimulated the formation of a modern industrial economy. Beginning with the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, and followed by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, war booms shaped the contours of Japanese capitalism. Nascent factory production turned out armaments and ships to meet military demand and textiles bound for the East Asian markets that were captured in Japan’s first colonial wars. When war broke out in Europe in 1914 the resulting disruptions in the global economy provided an opening for Japanese trade expansion, ushering in the third war boom in the space of twenty years. Although the initial impact of the war was to depress economic activity because of the rupture to international trade, by 1916 the opportunities opened up by the European war had touched off what amounted to a new phase in Japan’s industrial revolution. The withdrawal of European textile and light industrial producers from colonial markets in Asia created a void into which Japanese manufacturers rapidly expanded. War cut them off from [52.14.130.13] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 10:46 GMT...

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