Guest post by Alison Miles: Some geographical aspects of a visit to Japan in 2013

I visited Japan in autumn 2013 and my main reason was to see Jim, who lived there for several years. It was about six months after I retired so a wonderful opportunity to take a long-haul flight (my first ever) to somewhere on the other side of the world. Everyone knows about the spring cherry blossom in Japan and how much it is celebrated. I had considered a spring visit, but October/November was more convenient. So I was delighted to discover that the autumn colours in Japan are also fantastic. As the two weeks of my holiday progressed the maples and other trees and shrubs intensified in colour, to bright reds and oranges.

But it wasn’t just the autumn colours that amazed me. There were so many other aspects of the country that were fascinating including the cities I visited — Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya and Toyahashi. It was also wonderful, in all senses of the word, to experience features associated with active vulcanicity particularly in the area around Hakone, where I stayed with friends who have a house there.

Wherever I go, I rarely switch off from my background as a geographer (to the amusement, or maybe irritation, of my companions!). So my Japan holiday was a perfect way to observe aspects of the country that really interested me — and have led to the title of this guest post.

My two geographical themes are ‘Urban structures’ and ‘Earthquakes and volcanoes’.

Urban structures

From the mid 1960s I have been very much aware of urban structure, including some of the models that originated in North America in the first half of the 20^th century, starting with Burgess’s concentric rings model, first proposed in the late 1920s based on land use in Chicago. It demonstrates correlation between economic status and distance from the centre (where the central business district, CBD, is located). As you would expect this very simple model has its limitations and in real life the situation is far more complicated. However, it provides a starting point for looking at urban structure. The key to the colours for both the models drawn below uses the word ‘class’ to help describe the nature of each zone, for example ‘low class’ – small residential properties occupied by factory workers, ‘medium class’ – larger properties and more open space, and ‘high class’ – larger still with plenty of space, sometimes known as the commuter zone.

It was soon evident that a more complex model would be better and by 1939 the sector (or Hoyt) model was proposed.

Although these two early models of urban land use are based on American cities almost 100 years ago, I find they give me a pattern to think about. Inevitably they are massive oversimplifications of reality. It is, however, possible to find some aspects of even the oldest models that help when it comes to making sense of the layout and functions of a European city.

For UK towns and cities I find it relatively easy to identify the different ages of properties, the uses of buildings and the way the urban areas have grown. There are reasons for this, the most obvious being my own experience of living in the country over many years as well as a tendency to try and make sense of what I am seeing. So the UK city/town centre of narrow streets and old properties replaced further out by residential ribbon development then late 20th century estates, interspersed with commercial sites, is totally familiar to me.

In Japan I was essentially a tourist, sightseeing rather than doing geographical fieldwork, but I am interested in my surroundings. The Japanese cities that I visited were fascinating. There was a mix of high rise and single/two-storey residential buildings, retail parks, open spaces (sports fields and urban parks) and all the usual trappings of modern transport whether rail (train and tram) or road. But I had difficulty identifying actual patterns of different land uses and could not answer questions such as: Is there a retail area? Where are offices concentrated? What evidence is there of residential expansion? The cities that I visited are huge — the smallest, Toyohashi, has a population of over 350,000 — which partly explains why structure did not jump out at me. Most of the buildings look very modern:

A view of Toyohashi that I took looking north from the station area

Although I could not identify old city core areas, I visited two areas of old-style properties (now tourist attractions) in Tokyo and Kyoto, Asakusa and Gion respectively. Japan-Guide (https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3004.html, and https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3004.html ) says: ‘Asakusa is the centre of Tokyo‘s shitamachi (literally “low city”), where an atmosphere of the Tokyo of past decades survives. Gion is Kyoto‘s most famous geisha district and attracts tourists with its high concentration of traditional wooden machiya merchant houses. Due to the fact that property taxes were formerly based upon street frontage, the houses were built with narrow facades only five to six meters wide, but extend up to twenty meters in from the street’.

Apart from reconstructed areas built in the traditional style, buildings did not look old but there were many areas where streets were narrow, properties very tightly packed and often high rise, suggesting high land values that are often typical of commercial sectors.

A photo that I took of a narrow street in Tokyo

In contrast, other areas had wider streets, longer frontages, fewer storeys and some open spaces. Then there were mixtures – single or two-storey properties mixed with higher ones.

A final contrast

It was easy to travel between Japanese cities:

Shinkansen (bullet train), a photo that I took at Toyohashi station in October 2013

In the UK, I was used to more old-fashioned trains:

This photo of an intercity diesel train was posted on Taunton Trains blog in 2012

Earthquakes and volcanoes

Japan lies on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean, part of the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’. This phrase refers to the incidence of volcanic activity round the Pacific Rim, where crustal plates move towards each other. Japan lies along the boundary of the Pacific plate as it moves westwards converging with and sliding beneath the Eurasian and Philippine plates. This leads to instability that results in volcanoes and earthquakes.

Over the years there have been devastating earthquakes in Japan.

One of the most recent was in 2011, the Tohoku earthquake, the strongest recorded in Japan, affecting the north-east coast of Honshu. The earthquake triggered a tsunami that flooded the Fukoshima nuclear power plant and killed nearly 20,000 people. I remember visiting the Kaetsu Educational and Cultural Centre in Cambridge (sadly now closed but its website still exists for archive purposes: http://www.kaetsu.co.uk/ ) where they were raising money for the people in the devastated area. The displays and presentations gave me some understanding of the problems for displaced residents, starting with homelessness and lack of occupation/employment.

The 1923 Great Kanto earthquake caused huge damage to Tokyo and over 100,000 deaths. Asakusa, mentioned above, was devastated by fire. It happened at lunchtime as people were cooking, leading to massive fires across the city that took days to control. Following that disaster there was a review of building structures to reduce risk in future earthquakes.

One very interesting aspect of my visit to Japan was the technology area in the Okumura Corporation Commemorative Museum in Nara, south of Kyoto (https://www.okumuragumi.co.jp/en/commemorative/ ):

I took this photo to show how the building sits on a seismic isolation system. The ‘ground’ floor houses an area with interactive displays that demonstrate the effects of technologies designed to reduce earthquake impacts.

As well as earthquakes, I saw an abundance of evidence of volcanic activity starting with Mount Fuji, the cultural icon of Japan, and incidentally a good example of a composite cone, or strato-volcano.

When I visited the Hakone volcanic area the weather was good enough to see Mount Fuji so I was lucky to take this photo. In the foreground are signs of the smoky sulphurous area of the Owakudani valley.

The Owakudani valley was created around 3,000 years ago when the Hakone volcano exploded. At the same time Lake Ashi (Ashinoko) was formed in the caldera of the volcano, and it is one of the many tourist attractions of the region.

I took this photo from a ‘pirate ship’ that provided trips across the lake – popular with everyone, particularly Chinese tourists on the day I visited.

The pirate ship berthed at the end of the Hakone ropeway which gave access to the Owukudani valley. The valley is very spectacular with vents (fumaroles) emitting sulphurous fumes and steam. At the time, 2013, the warning sign below and a few closed paths were the only restrictions to visitors but in 2015 the site was closed because of increased volcanic activity. It was partially reopened in 2016 with warnings that ‘high volcanic activity’ made it unsuitable for ‘people with asthma, bronchitis, heart disease, heart pacemakers, and pregnant women’.

In the Hakone residential area there was plenty of evidence of natural hot water, for example the ditches along the roadsides were steaming (and, incidentally, plants in the verges included the dreaded Japanese knotweed — no problem as the ecosystem has natural controls including insects and fungi).

This brief account highlights a couple of themes that particularly interested me when I visited Japan. There is a huge amount more that I would like to see and do – maybe one day!

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A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.