ABSTRACT
T He popular names for the major districts of large cities—East End, West End, South-side, the Left Bank—are not always capable of precise territorial definition. This is understandable since these names stand, more than anything, as symbols of different ways of life. Modern Tokyo, for the urban ecologist, divides satisfactorily into the concentric zones he seeks to find, 2 but as far as the ordinary inhabitant of Tokyo is concerned his city is divisible into two parts—Shitamachi, the ‘down-town’ districts, and Yamanote, the ‘hill-side’. Of the various characteristics by which they are supposed to be distinguished from each other, we may briefly list a few.
