JapanNewbie

City of cities

Posted on 01. Mar, 2008 @ 11:33 am by harvey in Society, Tokyo

Megacity. Sounds like terminology out of an Anime, but it’s the real deal.

A megacity [wiki] is a city with more than 10 million people. Tokyo is currently the largest megacity in the world, with a population of almost 36 million. This figure includes some of the surrounding areas, including Yokohama, Kawasaki, Chiba, and others. (So now all of you living in Yokohama yet still tell your friends that you live in Tokyo are justified!)

So if you’re in Tokyo, congratulations, it doesn’t get any more populated than that! And it won’t for quite a while.

According to the an article in Japan Times…

“In 2025, Tokyo is still expected to be the world’s most populous urban agglomeration, with 36 million inhabitants,” according to “2007 Revisions of World Urbanization Prospects.”

This is despite the current aging society and low birth rate which has no hope of making up the difference. This growth could be due to the numbers of Japanese moving to urban areas from rural Japan, and also the number of immigrants moving in from other countries. I’m going to bet that the latter is the least significant contributing factor of the two.

Last year I had a chance to talk to a school teacher and family living in Shimoda, a small city which gets a lot of tourism due its proximity to the ocean and of course, onsens. They said that their town is really feeling the effects of the aging society (少子化: literally, change to fewer children) and a lot of their junior high schools and high schools are closing or merging, leaving huge empty school buildings around the town.

It’s quite the “pinch” isn’t it? The aging society makes it harder to live out in the country and have a satisfying career due to a lack of jobs… Thus driving more and more people to move to the cities. However when you get to the cities, it’s difficult to have a large family due to the hectic lifestyle, small living quarters, and high rent. Does anyone have newly-wed Japanese acquaintances who plan on having more than 2 children? I have a lot of Japanese friends between 25 and 35 years old, and I cannot recall a single one who is married with plans to have more than 2 kids. Quite a few 2 children family, but 3 seems to be quite a challenge…

Me? Kids? Hah. Not yet. ;-)

- Harvey