ABSTRACT
With industrialization, Japanese urbanization rates, already substantial during the Tokugawa period, rapidly increased, population crowding into the cities throughout the country but especially in the big six cities – Tokyo and Yokohama in the Kanto plain; Nagoya on the Nobi plain; and Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe in the Kinai district fed by the great Yodo River. As population densities in these massive urban centers rose, land rents and housing prices shot up.
