Neighborhood and Small Town—The Foundation for Urban ...

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Neighborhood and Small Town—The Foundation for Urban ...

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Journal of Urban History
http://juh.sagepub.com/
 
 
Machi : Neighborhood and Small Town The Foundation for Urban Transformation in
Japan
Journal of Urban History 2008 35: 75
DOI: 10.1177/0096144208322463
 
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://juh.sagepub.com/content/35/1/75
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Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com by guest on May 21, 2011Journal of Urban History
Volume 35 Number 1
November 2008 75-107
© 2008 Sage Publications
10.1177/0096144208322463
http://juh.sagepub.comMachi
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
Neighborhood and Small Town—The
Foundation for Urban Transformation in Japan
Carola Hein
Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania
The term machi, signifying both neighborhood and small town, is a key element for
understanding Japanese urban form and city planning. After tracing the origins of the term,
this article explores the historic and contemporary significance of the concept and its particular
spatial and socioeconomic forms. The article then argues that the concept of machi influenced
the ways in which Japanese planners picked up foreign concepts through the nineteenth and
particularly the twentieth century, absorbing some ideas and rejecting others. Building on their
perception of the city as composed of urban units that allowed for planning in patchwork
patterns, leading Japanese planners carefully selected models—independently of international
appreciation—making, for example, the book The New Town by the German planner Gottfried
Feder a standard reference. The article concludes by arguing that foreign observers must
understand the concept of machi to comprehend contemporary Japanese neighborhoods, city
life, and urban forms.
Keywords: machi; Japanese urban planning; Nishiyama Uzô, Ishikawa Hideaki; Gottfried Feder
n 1854, American navy ships under Commodore Matthew Perry appeared off the shores Iof Japan and pressured the formerly secluded nation into accepting a treaty that included
1opening some ports to American ships and the beginning of trading. With this opening to
outside influences, Japanese professionals began to study, among other subjects, modern-
2izing European and American cities in search of models to implement at home. When they
applied new principles, Japanese practitioners tweaked the original ideas to make them fit
their own changing cultural backgrounds, local needs, experiences, and practice. I argue
that one element in their particular reading of foreign form was and continues to be their
understanding of urban space in terms of neighborhoods and small towns, both of which
are called machi in Japanese. The word itself captures themes in national and local identity
and different perspectives on urban living, density, and transportation, and evokes—at least
in some of its meanings—specific socioeconomic structures and urban development. As
machi appears to be a foundation of Japanese urban thought, a closer look at the term and
its multiple meanings may well be useful to foreign observers and scholars interested in
Japanese planning, urban form, and thought.
Indeed, without such an understanding, European and American scholars and practition-
ers have had a difficult time understanding the form and function of Japanese cities, leading
to varied and complex views and changing interpretations over time. This history also dates
to the mid-nineteenth century: even as the Japanese investigated the outside world, the
75
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Figure 1
Note: The Vienna World’s Fair (1873) provided an opportunity for exchange. It introduced the fair’s visitors to
Japanese lifestyle and forms and allowed the Japanese delegation to prepare an extensive report introducing new
technologies to Japan.
Source: Union Central des Arts Décoratifs, ed. Le livre des expositions universelles 1851-1989 (exhibition
catalog). Paris: éditions des arts décoratifs-herscher, 1983.
formerly closed East Asian nation opened to more widespread observation, and Japanese
design, landscaping, architecture, and urban form attracted growing foreign attention.
Some Western professionals traveled to Japan to explore, study traditional Japanese arts, or
exchange knowledge, while others imported Japanese concepts and objects into new con-
texts. A first exhibit of Japanese objects in New York in 1853, followed by world’s fairs in
numerous centers, including London (1862), Vienna (1873), Philadelphia (1876), Paris
(1878), and Chicago (1893), showcased Japanese architecture, art, and lifestyles (see
3Figure 1). Rapidly, Japanese design made its mark on Western art and furniture, while
4landscape architects were excited to incorporate ideas from Japanese gardens (see Figure 2).
In the 1920s, Frank Lloyd Wright and other leading architects, bent on promoting function-
alist concepts, demonstrated growing interest in the structural elements of Japanese tradi-
5tional architecture. These Western observers went to Japan to learn but also to find
justification, support, and inspiration for local needs and debates. The elements they chose
to observe often reflected discussions back home.
In the early years of contact with Japan, foreigners repeatedly criticized modernizing
Japanese cities and planners for the apparent discontinuity of urban space and lack of plan-
6ning principles. Western scholarly interest in the Japanese city and comparative studies
grew in the 1960s with the translation into English of books. Of particular impor-
tance among these were the works of the sociologist Yazaki Takeo, who, while intent on
comparison and classification, highlighted the need to keep in mind distinct patterns of
7change and continuity. By the 1970s, Western scholarly discussion saw a number of pub-
lications that celebrated a unique Japanese urban form—particularly visible in the capital,
8Tokyo—based on continuities between the traditional and the modern city. This shift during
the past three decades, from criticizing the city to celebrating it, is visible in the changing
Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com by guest on May 21, 2011Hein / Machi 77
Figure 2
Note: The contact with Japanese design influenced Western artists as showcased in Japonese decorations on
furniture and vases by Maison Christofle, displayed at the World’s Fair in Paris, 1878, and the emergence of
“Japonisme.”
Source: Falize Fils, Exposition Universelle de 1878. Les Industries d’Art au Champ-de-Mars, orfèvrerie et
bijouterie dans Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1878, tome 18, p. 230.
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metaphors that Japanese and foreigners have deployed in urban projects, architecture, and
publications to describe and “re-script” Tokyo: as the British geographer Paul Waley puts
9it, in their views, Tokyo has gone “from ugly duckling to cool cat.” The “most persistent
cluster of metaphors,” Waley says, is the theme of “Tokyo . . . as a city of villages,” or
10“Tokyo as something smaller than the sum of its parts.” Indeed, as the American historian
of Japan, Henry Smith has pointed out, the village metaphor has long been a theme in for-
11eign writings about the city.
The notion of a metropolis as a cluster of villages is not new or limited to Japanese cities.
During the past century, visitors and researchers have described many cities, including
Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Toronto, and even New York as composed of unique units. In
1929, the American planner Clarence Arthur Perry stated that “every great city is a con-
glomeration of small communities. For example, Manhattan—New York’s oldest bor-
12ough—contains sections like Chelsea, Kip’s Bay and Yorkville.” It is thus not surprising
that the distinctive patchwork character of small and imaginatively used units in Japanese
cities has captured the imagination of foreign practitioners. During the past three decades,
these practitioners have looked to Japanese approaches for ideas about designing increas-
ingly chaotic, albeit comprehensively planned, European, American, and Australian cities;
they are intrigued by local initiatives that allow parts of the city to change flexibly accord-
13ing to different rhythms and varying principles.
In particular, the concepts of the neighborhood (machi) and community building (machi-
zukuri) have evolved into a central concern for contemporary Japanese and foreign research-
ers and practitioners of urban and built form, as well as for those interested in social
14organization. In Neighborhood Tokyo, the American anthropologist Theodore Bestor points
out that “Tokyo neighborhoods are geographically compact and spatially