ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the distribution of income and occupational groups among places in Tokyo, including levels and patterns of spatial income inequality and trends over time. It explores how various political, economic and cultural factors prevent spatial income inequality from growing into class based segregation in Tokyo. The compressed wage system Japan's compressed wage system is perhaps the primary reason why residential income inequality does not translate into social class segregation in Tokyo. The institutional power centers that underpin Tokyo's functional primacy in Japan's urban system are concentrated in the city's four core wards. High per capita incomes not with standing, residents in the central wards receive the same level of public goods and serves as Tokyoites living elsewhere in the city. One must look to the character of Japan's political economy to understand why spatial income inequality does not translate into residential class segregation.
