ABSTRACT
Beard succinctly analysed in 1923 the main reasons why, in his view, Japanese urban planning was not developing in similar ways to Western countries in his book Administration and Politics of Tokyo: “It is evident from the foregoing facts that Tokyo has possessed a certain degree of self-government for more than thirty years, and that there is an increasing interest in civic affairs among the people. One is moved to ask, therefore, why it is that the city is so backward in many things like sewers, paved streets, and transportation. Thousands of citizens have long enjoyed the right to vote. Why have they not used that right to compel a transformation of material aspects of the city?” (Beard 1923: 145). Beard identified a number of reasons:
1 the elected mayor’s powers were weak, and policy was controlled by the city council and by prefectural and imperial officers;
2 the people of Tokyo had recently emerged from a feudal order, were used to obedience, and not to self-assertion and self-government;
3 Tokyo was mainly a collection of villages with a metropolitan centre, and the great mass of the population was composed of small shopkeepers and villagers who were politically unorganised;
4 in the West organised labour had a profound impact on municipal politics, even developing complete municipal programmes, “In Tokyo, however, the working classes, broadly speaking, cannot vote, are not organised, and have no municipal interest or programme” (Beard 1923: 147);
5 imperial bureaucrats were “often ardent advocates of enlightened policies, but they are not as a rule zealous to promote the rapid growth of a public sentiment which might endanger their prerogatives” (Beard 1923: 147);
6 the women’s movement was weak, and women still had no vote; 7 “The system of suffrage, nominations, and elections does not encourage the public
interest on any of the main issues such as roads, sewers, sanitation, transportation, congestion, or public health” (Beard 1923: 148).
