![Sample our Built Environment journals, sign in here to start your access, Latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5926/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Built-Environment.jpg"})
Abstract
The Japanese City Planning Law, enacted in 1968, revised the 1919 City Planning Law. It has been described as comprehensive but containing defects, such as imperfect delegation of planning powers to the municipalities. Authoritative works on the history of modern Japanese urban planning by Ishida and Sorensen also emphasize the historical background of the 1968 Law, namely, a general agreement on the need to control urban development based on land-use planning and the progressive historical context. The relationship between this background and the formulation of the 1968 Law is yet to be examined. Analyses of public records, the Diet debates and newspapers demonstrate the following: first, delegation of planning powers to the municipalities, although imperfect, could have been further limited; and second, the ruling party's fear of losing the electorate's support in urban areas and the media pressure on the government made a perfunctory bill inevitable.
Notes on contributor
Junichi Hasagawa is a Professor at the Faculty of Economics, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. His publications include Replanning the Blitzed City Centre (1992) and (with Nick Tiratsoo) Urban Reconstruction in Britain and Japan, 1945–1955 (2002), and he has also published several chapters and papers on British and Japanese reconstruction, including ‘The Attitudes of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning Towards Blitzed Cities in 1940s Britain’, Planning Perspectives, 28, no. 2 (2013).
Notes
1 Ishida, “Senkyuhyakurokujuhachinen Toshikeikakuho no Rekishitekihaikei to Hyoka”, reproduced in Ishida, Nihonkindaitoshikeikakushikenkyu Shinsoban, 307–23.
2 For the development of a new planning system based on the 1968 planning law, see Ishida, Nihonkindaitoshikeikaku no Hyakunen, Chap. 9; Ishida, Nihonkingendaitoshikeikaku no Tenkai 1868–2003, Chap. 9; Sorensen, Making of Urban Japan, Chap. 6. For the background, contents and problems of the 1968 Law, also see Hebbert and Nakai, How Tokyo Grows.
3 Masumi, Nihonseijishi 4, 308.
4 Sorensen, Making of Urban Japan, 214.
5 Asahi Shimbun (Asahi), January 23 and February 6, 1967 and Yomiuri Shimbun (Yomiuri), January 31, 1967.
6 Asahi, February 1, 1967.
7 Mainichi Shimbun (Mainichi), March 4, 1967.
8 Asahi and Mainichi, editorial, March 26, 1967.
9 Yomiuri, March 15, 1967.
10 Yomiuri, editorial, March 26, 1967.
11 Asahi, evening edition, April 7, 1967.
12 Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei), April 7, 1967. Also see, Oshio, Toshi no Jidai, 82–4.
13 See, e.g. Asahi, Mainichi and Yomiuri, February 23, 1967, Asahi, March 8 and 9, 1967, Nikkei, evening edition, April 16, 1967, Asahi, Mainichi and Yomiuri, May 24 and Nikkei, May 25, 1967.
14 See, e.g. Mainichi, March 8 and Asahi, editorial, March 12, 1967, Asahi, May 14, 1967, editorials of Asahi, May 22, Mainichi, May 16 and Yomiuri, May 16, 1967.
15 Mainichi, March 15, 1967.
16 Draft of an outline of the bill with handwritten notes in Japanese saying, ‘(deputy secretaries meeting) the cabinet meeting, 23 June’, 18, in the National Archives (NA), Honkan-4A-030-00·Hei15Housei00385100.
17 Draft of the bill dated 5 July 1967, 29, in NA, Honkan-4A-030-00·Hei15Housei00387100.
18 Draft of an outline of the bill dated 14 June 1967, 3, in NA, Honkan-4A-030-00·Hei15Housei00385100.
19 ‘Toshikeikakuhouan (Yoko) nitaisuru Iken’ [‘Opinions regarding the city planning bill (outline)’], 1, in NA, Honkan-4A-030-00·Hei15Housei00385100.
20 Draft of an outline of the bill dated 14 June 1967, 9–10.
21 ‘Toshikeikakuhouan (Yoko) nitaisuru Iken’, 1–2.
22 Draft of an outline of the bill for the cabinet meeting of 23 June 1967, entry no. 6-1-1 and 6-1-2-1, in NA, Honkan-3A-016-00·Hei11Sou02206100.
23 Ibid., entry no. 6-1-3.
24 As for newspapers' reports about the outlines of the bill, see, e.g. Asahi, Mainichi, Nikkei and Yomiuri, May 4, 1967, evening edition of Asahi, Nikkei and Yomiuri, June 23, 1967 and Asahi and Mainichi, June 24, 1967.
25 Minutes of the 32nd meeting of the House of Representatives (HR), July 4, 1967, 868; the 22nd meeting of the House of Councillors (HC), July 5, 1967, 634; the 22nd meeting of the HC Construction Committee, July 11, 1967, 4–5.
26 Minutes of the 11th meeting of the HR Budget Committee, April 4, 1967, 8; the 17th meeting of the HC, June 16, 1967, 520; the 22nd meeting of the HC, July 5, 1967, 635–6.
27 Minutes of the 18th meeting of the HR Construction Committee, June 28, 1967, 9.
28 Mainichi, editorial, June 29, 1967.
29 Asahi, editorial, July 5, 1967.
30 Minutes of the 1st meeting of the Joint Research Councils of the Construction Committee and the Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery Committee of both Houses, April 18 (HR) and May 10 (HC), 1968.
31 Asahi, editorial, April 14 and Mainichi, editorial, April 17, 1968.
32 Yomiuri, May 18, 1968.
33 Nikkei, evening edition, April 16, 1967.
34 Asahi, June 13, 1968 and June 7, 1972.
35 Comments by Oshio in a round-table talk on the 15th anniversary of the City Planning Law, in Shintoshi [New City], no. 359, March 1985, 18 and 19.
36 The favourable tax treatment for farmers in UPAs, exempting from a standard housing-land tax on farmland, was adopted as a last-minute supplementary resolution by the four parties, including the LDP and the JSP (Minutes of the 17th meeting of the HR Construction Committee, April 19, 1968, 9). However, it remained in place for years, allowing the speculative holding of land. Consequently, it restricted land supply while failing to curb soaring land prices. Passim in Hebbert and Nakai, How Tokyo Grows.