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Page 1: Population Redistribution and Urbanization in Japan

Population Redistribution and Urbanization in JapanSource: Population Index, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Apr., 1943), pp. 73-77Published by: Office of Population ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3030774 .

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Page 2: Population Redistribution and Urbanization in Japan

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C U RRE NT IT E M S

POPULATION REDISTRIBUTION AND URBANIZATION IN JAPAN

Population changes accompanying the proc- ess of industrialization have been stud- ied intensively within the orbit of West-

ern culture. The simi arities of change in various nations have been sufficient to permit generalizations concerning the relationship of population growth, fertility, mortality, and migration to a developing technological civilization. At a time when the general trend of de- velopment of great Oriental cultures may be away from agriculture to- ward an industrial base, itbecomes important to determine the extent to which these generalizations from Western experience may be applied to the East. The fundamental problem is the extent to which declining fertility and mortality, regional concentration, andurbanization are necessary correlates of an industrial and technological economy, re- gardless of the nature of the nonmaterial culture* Because it is tne one industrialized country of the Orient, Japan is the natural focus for study of this problem. Therefore, this note on the redistribution and urbanization of the population of Japan between 1920 and 1940 is a case study of some of the demographic correlates of industrializa- tion in a culture quite distinct from those of the Occident.

Japan's economic transition began after along period of popula- tion stability in the premodern period, when balance of population and resources was maintained by the dual controls of famine and disease, plus the widespread customs of abortion and infanticide. Following the Meiji restoration of 1868, Japan apparently experienced consider- able population growth. Available information indicates that the rate of increase accelerated with the absorption of Western material culture.

The first modern census of Japan in 1920 revealed a population of almost 56 millions. By 1940 the population had risen to 75.1 millions, or 31 per cent. The increase of 1742 millions was very unevenly dis- tributed throughout Japan.. Thirteen of the forty-seven prefectures gained less than ten per cent in the twenty-year period, while twenty- nine gained less than twenty per cent. Only ten gained at a higher rate than the national averages Hokkaido, Aomori, and Miyagi prefec- tures in the northeast; Tokyo and Kanagawa in the Kwanto region; Aichi in the central section; Kyoto, Osaka, and Hyogo in the Kinki region; and Fukuoka in the southwest. Over two-thirds of the total increase in the twenty-year period occurred in these ten prefectures; more than one-third occurred in the two prefectures of Tokyo and Osaka alone.

This concentration of population gain brought about some shift in the relative importance of the several regions. The Kwanto disg trict, which includes Tokyo and Yokahama as well as several subsidiary cities, had 20 per cent of the Japanese population in 1920 and 23 per cent in 1940. The Kinki region, including the great cities of Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto, increased its share of the total from 15 per cent in 1920 to 16 in 1940. The Tokai region, with Nagoya, and the large, relatively undeveloped Island of Hokkaido. also gained in relation to the country as a whole. The other seven regions failed to maintain their relative status during the demographic transformations of the ' twenties and 'thirties, However, these larger administrative regions

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Page 3: Population Redistribution and Urbanization in Japan

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of Japan are too heterogeneous to reveal the extent of the concentra- tion that was occurring. The prefectures containing the cities of Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, andKobe had 13.3 million peo- ple in 1920 and 22.5 million in 1940. In 1920 they included 24 per cent of the total population; in 1940, 31 per cent. Tokyo and Osaka prefectures alone gained almost six million people in the course of the two decades; they contained 11 per cent of the population in 1920 and 17 per cent in 1940.

It is obvious from these figures that there was a great movement of people to the large cities. That this was a rural-urban migration similar to that of the West is evidenced by statistics on changes in the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture and changes in the rural-urban distribution. The percentage of the gainfully oc- cupied population in agriculture declined from 77 in 1872 to 48 in 1930; in the latter year only 40 per cent of all gainfully occupied males worked in agriculture. On the other hand, the number of persons gainfully occupied in agriculture remained practically stationary from the registration estimates of 1872 through the census counts of 1920 and 1930. As might be anticipated, the total rural population also showed little change. The number of persons living outside incorpor- ated communes of 30 thousand or more population remained at about 45 millions between 1920 and 1940, while the entire national increase was absorbed in the larger urban areas. Less than afifth of the Japanese lived in urban areas so defined in 1921; about three-eighths were urban in 1939. Despite some irregularities, gains were greater in the larger sized communes and greatest in those communes with 100 thousand or more population.

The developments of the Japanese population between 1935 and 1940 indicate that the process of concentration in larger and larger cities was losing its momentum, though it isimpossible to determine whether changes in this quinquennium represented the operation of underlying economic factors or merely the exigencies of war. The intercensal rate of increase for the 182 cities within their 1941 boundaries was 17 per cent in 1920-1925, 15per cent in 1925-1930 and 1930-1935, and only 10 per cent between 1965 and 1940.

The impact of war changes on the economy is obvious in the rela- tive growth of cities in different areas, Between 1935 and 1940, Kobe and Osaka, cities more dependent on light industry and the export trade, grew only 6 and 9 per cent, respectively. Tokyo and Yokohama, which are centers of war industry, increased 15and 37 per cent. Fur- thermore, this rapid growth of the central cities was supplemented by a proliferation of subsidiary cities in the neighboring areas of the Kwanto region. Some of these satellite cities experienced phenomenal development during the decade 1930-1940. Yokosuka, the naval base, jumped from 110 to 193 thousand; Kawasaki, the great shipbuilding center, leaped from 104 to 301 thousand.

A similar urbanization characterized the lesser metropolitan dis- trict of Nagoya. The city itself grew 23 per cent in the five-year period, 1935-1940, and, as in the case of Tokyo, its satellites in- creased rapidZy in size. Another region of concentrated industrializa- tion included the prefectures of Fukuoka and Yamaguchi, and, to a lesser extent, Hiroshima. This southwestern region is a center of mining and

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Page 4: Population Redistribution and Urbanization in Japan

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war production. Unlike t~he other chief industrial regions, it is not dominated by a single city, but there has been rapid urban develop- ment. The eight chief cities of the prefecture of Fukuoka had a pop- ulation of 891 thousand in 1950 and 1.3 millions in 1940, an increase of 46 per cent in the decade.

The regional changes in population distribution and differential growth of city and non-city population discussed above obviously imply widespread migration. The role of international migration, either into or from Japan, has been relatively negligible. In 1930, there were only 601 thousand foreign-born persons resident inJapan Proper. Ninety-nine per cent of the total population were native born. The largest single concentration of the foreign born, mainly Koreans, was in Osaka prefecture, but even here they constituted less than three per cent of the total. Immigration restrictions checked the develop- ment of Chinese colonies, asin Yokohama, which atone time threatened to be a serious source of competition for Japanese labor. Emigration from Japan had more than balanced immigration, atleast until the re- cent period. In the Ithirties there were slightly over one million Japanese abroad, including first and later generations; anadditional 1.3 millions were living outside Japan Proper but within the Empire. Though emigrants may have come predominantly from rural districts and immigrants may have gone primarily to the cities, the total numbers migrating are too small to have been a decisive factor in the actual redistribution of the population of Japan between 1920 and 1940. This redistribution was clearly a function of internal migration.

Place of birth statistics indicate that, in 1930, no less than 83 per cent of the Japanese population were living in the prefecture of birth. In the United States in the same year, only 67 per cent were living in the state of birth. The only states in this country with rates equal to or larger than that for all Japan were inthe Old South. The only Japanese prefectures with less than 70 per cent of their total populations born within the prefecture were Hokkaido, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Kyoto, and Osaka; evenin such a prefecture as Aichi, which contains the large city of Nagoya, 85 per cent of the residents had been born within the prefecture. In many of the rural prefectures of the northern and southern peripheries three-fourths of the total population lived in the commune of their birth.

The impression of stability in these figures is actually the stability of the residual population in areas of out-migration with little counterbalancing in-migration. Four-fifths of the prefectures had a net loss by migration; one-fifth absorbed all the net gain by migration, amounting to 5.3 million persons. The nine prefectures experiencing this gain were those with the six largest cities and the mining and colonization areas of Fukuoka, Miyazaki, and Hokkaido.

The available material on place of birth does not give any in- dication of recent migration or of changes in its pattern. Since both birth and death registrations inJapan are quite accurate, it is pos- sible to estimate the net amount of intercensal migration by adding to one census population the recorded intercensal natural increase and attributing to migration the difference between the estimate thus de- rived and the actual population. Obviously, estimates of net migration thus derived are residuals, influenced by both underregistration and

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Page 5: Population Redistribution and Urbanization in Japan

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underenumeration, which can give only a generally valid pictures

Net intercensal migration was computed foreach of the four quin- quennial periods since 1920. The estimates for the period between 1935 and 1940 are, however, only approximations, owing to the absence of definitive vital statistics since 1937, and the difficulties of pre- cise comparison of the 1935 and 1940 populations arising from military mobilization at the latter date. The pattern of net migration is es- sentially the same in all periods: dispersal from the rural prefec- tures, absorption in the prefectures containing the cities of Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. No prefecture other than these six gained significantly by internal migration between 1920 and 1925; Tokyo and Osaka alone absorbed 962 thousand of the net loss of 1.1 millions from the prefectures of dispersion. In 1925-1930 and 1930-1935 Hokkaido and Fukuoka joined the six prefectures mentioned above in having an appreciable net in-balance of migration, and again the net loss of all out-migration prefectures was absorbed in large part by the prefectures of Tokyo and Osaka. No prefectures lost pop- ulation in the period from 1920 to 1935, but in several cases losses by out-migration almost matched natural increase and in certain peri- ods exceeded it.

Though the general outline of migration since 1920 persisted in the period from 1935 to 1940, significant differences appear. Thus, Tokyo gained less than the neighboring prefecture of Kanagawa with its shipyards and naval base; Yamaguchi and Fukuoka, which contained min- ing and smelting industries, appeared as areas of large gains. The most significant aspect of the change between 1935 and 1940, however, is the number of prefectures with absolute declines in total popula- tion. Ishikawa, Shiga, Nagano, and Fukui inthe west central section, Tottori, Shimane, and Okayama in the west, Tokushima, Kagawa, and Kochi on the island of Shikoku, Kumamoto, Oita, and Kagoshima on the island of Kyushu, and Okinawa on the adjacent Ryukyu archipelago, all were characterized by net losses in population. The existence of population decline in fourteen of the forty-seven prefectures suggests that the movement from agriculture and consequent depopulation of the countryside may in part explain the appearance of a pro-natalist poli- cy shortly after the results of the 1940 census became available.

It is evident that the processes of population change accompanying the industrialization of Japan have been similar in broad outline to those which have occurred inWestern nations undergoing similar trans- formations in their fundamental economic structure. The process of urban concentration has been greatly accelerated; the relative growth of cities of 100 thousand and over inJapan between 1920 and 1935 was practically as great as that which occurred in the United States be- tween 1900 and 1940. Rural areas, smafl towns, and even cities of up to 30 thousand population have either lost population orbarely main- tained their numbers. The population remaining within prefectures has been redistributed, rural areas remaining stable or changing slowly, cities increasing rapidly. Moreover, the vast majority of the prefec- tures have contributed appreciable proportions of their natural in- crease to the expanding metropolitan centers of Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, Kyoto, and, to a lesser extent, the cities of Fukuoka and the developing industrial region in the southwest. Between 1925

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Page 6: Population Redistribution and Urbanization in Japan

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and 1935, thirty-nine of the forty-seven prefectures of Japan lost by migration. In seventeen prefectures, the migratory loss was equal to at least half the natural increase for the decade; in twelve, it amounted to between one-fourth and one-half, and in only ten, to less than one-fourth. The acceleration of the process after 1935 is ap- parent in the fact that fourteen of the forty-seven prefectures had migratory losses greater than their entire natural increase for the five-year period between 1935 and 1940.

The economic and political significance of this transformation of the structure of the Japanese population is incalculable. Its re- lationship to expansionist policies, armament and war are intricate; doubtless it was in part cause and in part effect of the military de- cisions which led to Manchuria, China, and Pearl Harbor. Its demo- graphic implications are equally great. The existence of vast conur- bations within a relatively restricted area, considered in conjunc- tion with the precarious agricultural situation and the gross inade- quacy of health and sanitation facilities, makes any estimate of the population costs of the war to Japan highly conjectural. The basic demographic question, however, is that of future birthanddeath rates. Crude birth rates in all prefectures declined in the successive quin- quennial periods between 1920 and 1935; net reproduction rates forthe country as a whole also declined. The regional pattern of fertility differentials was similar to that of Western nations. Thus there is presumptive evidence that the existence of a liberal regime in Japan might be accompanied by precipitant declines in fertility at least as great as any which have occurred in the West. Any discussion of the extent to which Japanese fertility and mortality trends will fol- low the patterns of decline that have been such an integral part of the industrial and urban culture of the West is purely speculative. The fact that the redistribution and urbanization of population which have accompanied the industrialization of Japan followed the pattern of the West does not validate the inference that the demographic cor- relates of industrialization will likewise follow the pattern of the Occident. It does indicate the need of caution in accepting the the- sis that the trends in fertility and mortality inthe industrializing countries of the Orient will differ fundamentally from those in the Occident.

The preceding discussion is based entirely on the published of- ficial statistics of Japan, with the exception of some prefecture-of- birth statistics taken from Ryoichi Ishii's Population Pressure and Economic Life in Japan. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1937. The city populations as of the censuses of 1950 and 1940 are the cen- sus populations resident within the municipal boundaries as of 1932 and May 1, 1941, respectively.

CANADIANS BORN IN THE UNITED STATES

The series of studies on the relations of Canada and the United States, prepared under the direc- tion of the Division of Economics and History of

the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has included three de- voted to population: The ingling of the Canadian and American Pe oples by Marcus L. Hansen andJohn B. Brebner; - Americ~an Bor i Canada, by 8: H. Coats and M. C. MacLean; and The Canadian Born in the United States, an Analysis of the Statistics of the Canadian Element in the

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