On 11 February 1931, primary school teachers, parents and children gathered in Fukagawa, one of Tokyo's poorest districts, to mark a significant milestone: the opening of a new park. Celebrations began in the morning with a Shinto priest conducting purification rites of Sennan Park, followed by speeches from local government officials including Inoshita Kiyoshi, director of Tokyo's Parks Department. Built adjacent to Sennan Primary School and measuring almost 3,000 square metres, Inoshita invited everyone to use the park and its facilities throughout the day for rest and recreation. In the afternoon, Tokyo's foremost expert on children and play, Sueda Masu, led a programme that focused entirely on local children. The concept of a playground was novel for many of these children, therefore Sueda began her speech by telling them, ‘This is your park. Isn't it wonderful!’ She pointed to the swings, slides, jungle gym and sand pit, and later demonstrated how to use the play equipment. She reassured children that they could run around and play safely here, free from the danger of trains and cars. In addition, Sueda mentioned the surrounding trees. She asked children to treat them with love and affection, and promised that in return, they would steadily grow tall and strong. In summer, the foliage would provide shade and keep children cool, while in winter, the trees would serve as a windbreak. Finally, Sueda urged children to ‘play well together and make your bodies strong’. The day concluded with games, puppet shows, kamishibai story telling and magic performances.Footnote 1 For such a small park located in an unremarkable neighbourhood on Tokyo's periphery, these were significant celebrations.
Sennan Park was one of 52 small parks built throughout eastern Tokyo between August 1926 and April 1931 as part of the project to reconstruct the capital following the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. Highlighting their importance, despite their small size, officials held ceremonies on every single inaugural occasion. The parks heralded a new era in urban design. As Sueda's speech suggested, officials, educators and child experts held big hopes for these small parks. Eventually, their designs went beyond targeting only children and encompassed what historians today would call innovative social management for all members of society. Although small, the original design and strategic placement of these new parks next to primary schools enabled them to play a significant role in the daily life of local residents in pre-war Tokyo. As Inoshita Kiyoshi himself wrote, ‘the name small parks (shōkōen) referred only to their size, it did not reflect their special features’.Footnote 2 Until now, however, the genesis and design of these small parks has been overlooked.
Compared to parks in American, British and European cities, the history and development of parks in Japanese cities has received little attention in English-language scholarship.Footnote 3 A history of Tokyo's first parks built in the Meiji period (1868–1912) by Paul Waley documents how Japan's leaders attempted to modernize Tokyo and refashion it as an imperial city by introducing western concepts of public parks. He focuses exclusively on Tokyo's well-known parks Ueno and Hibiya.Footnote 4 A sweeping study by Thomas Havens traces the planning and development of Japan's parks, green spaces and national parks from the Meiji period until the present day, and is a welcome addition to existing Japanese language scholarship. In a chapter on inter-war Tokyo, Havens examines efforts to redesign the city as part of the Imperial Capital Reconstruction Project. As with other scholarship on Tokyo's reconstruction following the 1923 earthquake, however, the small parks – referred to as ‘mini-parks’ by Havens – receive only the briefest mention.Footnote 5 Most scholars, including Havens, focus on the three large parks that were constructed. Koshizawa Akira, for example, points out that all three were a ‘new type of park’ for Tokyo: Sumida River became the first ‘riverside park’; Hamachō Park was the first large park located in the central business district of Nihonbashi and Kyōbashi; and Kinshi Park, located in the industrial area of Honjo and Fukagawa, was a ‘recreation park’ modelled on parks in Chicago. He does not explore the placement of small parks next to primary schools in any detail, other than to describe them as ‘local community centers (chiiki komyunitei no chūshin)’.Footnote 6 It is not surprising that the large parks have received more attention. Sumida Park, Kinshi Park and Hamachō Park covered a total area of 28.79 hectares. In comparison, the 52 small parks covered a total area of 14.59 hectares and in 1932 they accounted for only 6.6 per cent of Tokyo's total public park space of 222 hectares.Footnote 7 Indeed, if we measure the small parks by size, they appear to be less impressive. But this grossly underestimates their significance in terms of Tokyo's urban history, post-disaster reconstruction and inter-war agenda for social management.
This article explores the genesis of small parks in Tokyo following the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. In doing so, it sheds new light on an example of innovative urban design and post-disaster reconstruction. Moreover, it highlights the growing place that children occupied in the minds of bureaucrats and urban planners. I explore why urban planners and educators advocated for small parks, and how officials overcame budget restrictions and limited spatial opportunities to secure public support and achieve their goals. The small parks were designed for children first and foremost. Originally conceived as a means to increase the outdoor area available for school children to play and exercise, all 52 parks were strategically located beside primary schools. As the state's goals of social management expanded during the inter-war period, however, officials increasingly recognized the potential to use small parks as sites of rest and guided recreation, as well as emergency refuge. A history of Tokyo's small parks thus offers a window into the growing understanding officials and people acquired about the relationship between the built environment, health and society in inter-war Japan. Moreover, I suggest that government publications describing how to use the small parks illustrate the state's increasing awareness and desire to become involved in new areas of life such as leisure and play, as well as health and fitness. By charting how and why Japanese urban planners conceptualized and used new forms of space for social management, this study adds an important new dimension to existing studies on post-disaster reconstruction, social management, urban reform, as well as inter-war Japanese state and society.Footnote 8 Significantly, this study also challenges the idea that little innovation comes out of post-disaster planning and design.Footnote 9
Green dreams for a young and vulnerable city
A visitor arriving at Tokyo station in early 1923 might have assumed from the surrounding buildings and streetscapes that modern architecture and infrastructure defined the capital. The Marunouchi district in central Tokyo, located between the station and the imperial palace, housed the nation's key political, economic and cultural institutions in impressive concrete and brick buildings which exuded an image of modernity and permanence. Nearby, Hibiya Park – the first in Japan to be modelled explicitly on European concepts of a park – boasted manicured lawns, flower gardens, a children's playground and an outdoor auditorium.Footnote 10 But reinforced concrete buildings and expansive green spaces were not representative of the city as a whole.
In short, Tokyo was a disaster waiting to happen. Out of the 356,975 buildings, 91 per cent were constructed of wood (324,969) and only 0.1 per cent were reinforced concrete (427). Fires were common in this densely crowded and combustible city where residents used a naked flame for heating, cooking and lighting. Between 1905 and 1922, Tokyo recorded an average of 506 fires each year. Although most of these fires were extinguished before spreading to neighbouring properties, fire destroyed 32,041 houses in this period. Tokyo possessed a modern fire brigade equipped with up-to-date apparatus, but the labyrinth of narrow, winding laneways often prevented the large trucks from reaching the source of a fire. In fact, roads measuring less than 1.8 metres wide were so numerous that the municipal government aborted attempts to document their length after 1920.Footnote 11
Large or even small green spaces where Tokyo's residents could walk or play or seek refuge from a spreading fire were almost non-existent. In 1923, there were 25 parks in Tokyo, which covered a total area of 178 hectares, or 2.2 per cent of the capital. The parks were located haphazardly in 11 of Tokyo's 15 wards and ranged greatly in size (Figure 1). The Imperial Household Ministry managed the city's largest and oldest park, Ueno Park. Located in the city's north-east in Shitaya ward and covering 64.6 hectares, Ueno Park opened in 1873 and housed important national institutions including the Imperial Museum, Imperial Library and Ueno Zoological Gardens. The Tokyo municipal government's Parks Department (kōenka) managed the remaining 24 public parks. The Parks Department, one of 18 departments which sat directly under the municipal government (shiyakusho), was allocated a separate budget of ¥1,000,699 in 1921 to manage, improve and expand parks, as well as cemeteries and sites of historical significance. This represented 7 per cent of the government's annual budget, and ranked eleventh out of twelve budget priorities.Footnote 12 The 24 public parks covered a total area of 113.4 hectares. Three large parks – Shiba (48 hectares), Asakusa (21 hectares) and Hibiya (16 hectares) – accounted for three-quarters of this area.Footnote 13 Although described as parks, they were not large open green spaces as one may imagine. Temples, shrines and other buildings occupied large portions of the land. The usable area for Shiba Park was less than half its total area (42 per cent) and for Asakusa Park just over half (56 per cent). Hibiya Park was a rare exception whereby the public could use every square inch of the park.Footnote 14 No parks existed in Azabu, Yotsuya, Ushigome and Kanda wards, and the only park for residents of Kyōbashi ward was Sukiyabashi Park, measuring 0.27 hectares. It was not the smallest park in Tokyo, however. Kakigarachō Park in neighbouring Nihonbashi ward held this mantle, measuring just 0.13 hectares. East of the Sumida River the absence of parks was even more dire. In Honjo and Fukagawa wards, where 25 per cent of the city's factories were located (2,377) and the highest concentration of poor people lived, only 0.61 per cent of the total area was devoted to public parks.Footnote 15
Map of Tokyo before the 1923 earthquake (Tokyo Municipal Office, The Reconstruction of Tokyo (Tokyo, 1933)).
Visionary urban planners and bureaucrats employed vivid analogies alongside statistics to argue why Tokyo needed more parks. When Kikuchi Shinzō likened cities to a graveyard for human beings, it seemed an apt description for Tokyo.Footnote 16 Honjo and Fukagawa, the two wards with the smallest area of green space, also claimed the highest average death rate with 25 deaths per thousand residents. This was double the figure for New York City (12.39) and far higher than Liverpool (16.4).Footnote 17 Compared to other cities around the world, Tokyo lagged far behind London's 278 parks, Boston's 106 parks and Chicago's 72 parks. Paris, with a comparable population and area, possessed 10 times as much park space as Tokyo.Footnote 18 Kikuchi acknowledged that government officials were powerless to stem the flow of people to cities, therefore it was their responsibility as urban planners to counter the harmful side effects associated with high-density city living. Parks, many believed, were the obvious solution.
The health of Tokyo's youngest residents, and their limited access to parks and open green space, was a cause for even greater concern. Tokyo was not only a rapidly growing city, it was also a very young city. Children aged under 15 accounted for 30 per cent (636,121) of Tokyo's population (2,478,233). The number of births (27.7 births per 1,000 residents) far outweighed the death rate (17.94 per 1,000 residents). A child growing up in Tokyo faced many challenges beginning from birth. Of the 69,730 babies born in 1921, 14 per cent died in their first year. Illness continued to plague many children throughout their childhood. Of deaths recorded in Tokyo in 1922, 40 per cent were children aged under 15 (17,764), double the number of deaths for people aged over 60 (8,835).Footnote 19 Child psychologists and education experts increasingly viewed play as an important part of a healthy childhood in the early Taishō period (1912–26).Footnote 20 Yet apart from the Hibiya playground in central Tokyo, the city possessed few dedicated spaces for children to play. Even Tokyo's primary schools were pressed for space. A 1920 survey of primary school sports grounds in Japan's six largest cities (Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Yokohama and Kobe) found that the average area was two square metres per child. Tokyo, however, had the smallest average of only one square metre per child.Footnote 21
One leading advocate of building more parks in Tokyo was Inoshita Kiyoshi. Inoshita joined the municipal government's Public Works Department in 1905 as a civil engineer. He moved quickly through the ranks to become one of the leading landscape architects in the newly created Parks Department in 1921. Throughout his career, Inoshita was a prolific author and served on committees ranging from the Tokyo Zoological Park Society (Tokyo dōbutsuen kyōkai), and the Japan Cherry Blossom Association (Nihon sakura no kai), to the Japanese Children's Playground Association (Nihon jidō yūen kyōkai).Footnote 22 One theme running throughout his journal articles and books was a desire to build more parks for children. In 1923, Inoshita was instrumental in writing a book, published by the Parks Department, about the urgent need to build more parks and bring city people closer to nature. Using an analogy popular with his contemporaries Gotō Shinpei and Murataka Mikihiro, Inoshita argued, ‘A city needs parks, just like the human body needs lungs.’Footnote 23 Essentially, he championed parks for two reasons: to promote the health and hygiene of citizens, and to create more spaces for children to play. Given the scarcity of vacant land, Inoshita suggested that small parks designed for children and spread throughout the city would be better than large parks.Footnote 24 The eternal problem facing urban planners, however, was how and where they could build more parks. Previous attempts to improve Tokyo's built environment had failed and perhaps this is why Inoshita did not offer any specific plans on how to achieve his goal.Footnote 25 Never in his wildest dreams could Inoshita have imagined that five months later a magnitude 7.9 earthquake and fires would destroy 45 per cent of the capital. Soon Inoshita would preside over the reconstruction of parks as director of Tokyo's Parks Department.
Post-earthquake hopes and reconstruction realities
In the aftermath of the Great Kantō Earthquake, a significant number of urban planners and bureaucratic elites became enchanted by the idea that through more effective state management, and innovative infrastructure, state officials could apply technical and scientific benefits to influence ‘every field of human activity’. This is an idea that political scientist James Scott has since labelled ‘authoritarian high modernism’. As Scott has documented, high modernists shared a belief that a central purpose of the state was ‘the improvement of all members of society – their health, skills and education, longevity, productivity, morals, and family life’.Footnote 26 In the case of Japan, we see this idea of ‘high modernism’ take hold following the 1923 earthquake. In the post-disaster period, many government officials and bureaucrats believed that the reconstruction of Tokyo would not only enable them to shape the urban built environment, but also to expand the state's intervention into the daily lives of its subjects. Reconstructed primary schools and the adjacent small parks played a fundamental role in this complex endeavour.
The Great Kantō Earthquake and destruction of Tokyo fostered a sense of optimism and opportunism that long-held dreams to build an ideal city could finally be realized.Footnote 27 In the autumn of 1923, individuals ranging from urban planners to educators described their hopes and dreams for Tokyo's reconstruction in contemporary journals. Parks featured prominently. Armed with fresh evidence from the disaster, which claimed the lives of more than 60,000 victims in the capital alone, many now argued that Tokyo needed more parks to help protect residents in case of future emergencies. According to Honda Seiroku, 95 per cent of the deaths resulted from fire. In hindsight, the landscape architect who designed Hibiya Park believed that Tokyo could have avoided this tragic outcome if the city had possessed more parks. As a councillor in the newly created Imperial Capital Reconstruction Institute (Teito fukkōin), Honda advocated for the construction of new parks that were small and filled with trees ‘like forests’.Footnote 28 In early November, the Garden Association (Teien kyōkai) submitted a proposal to the president of the Reconstruction Institute, Gotō Shinpei, outlining its vision for parks in Tokyo. It recommended that the city be divided into five districts and in each district, five new types of parks should be built: large, medium and small parks, as well as children's parks and special parks for temples.Footnote 29
Urban planners from other parts of Japan also contributed to the debate about parks. Ōya Reijō believed that the best kind of parks for children were small neighbourhood parks where they could run around and play without disturbing adults. Existing large parks were unsuitable for children and his research supported this. Ōya found that children in Osaka preferred to play on the roadside near their home, rather than in the corner of a large park surrounded by strangers. The urban planning expert suggested that if the goal of parks was to encourage safe play for children, parks should be small and located within 550 metres of their home. In response to critics who claimed that small parks would be rendered useless as the city grew and population expanded, he said they ignored the realities of daily life in cities. ‘For children living in cities there is nothing better than small parks’, he wrote. ‘As future citizens, we want them to grow up strong and healthy in mind and body, that is why we need small parks.’Footnote 30
A strong consensus emerged among commentators that Tokyo needed more parks, and especially more small parks. It was teachers and educators, however, who led calls to build small parks next to primary schools. They had good reason to suggest this idea: fires following the earthquake destroyed 117 out of 196 primary schools in Tokyo. Children not only lost their schools and homes, they also lost safe outdoor spaces in which to play and exercise. In the rubble and ash of the ruins, followed by the dust from reconstruction, children's health suffered significantly. In 1924, 12.05 per cent of Tokyo's 189,115 primary school children failed to pass physical examinations due to poor health.Footnote 31 The earthquake amplified concerns about the need to cultivate children's health and fitness, both for daily life and in readiness for future disasters, and it also galvanized support for a radical reconstruction of Tokyo's schools. The destruction of the outdated and overcrowded wooden buildings presented an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild 60 per cent of the capital's most important learning institutions.
Educators such as Higuchi Chōichi and Ichikawa Genzō led calls not only to build modern reinforced concrete buildings, but also to build the schools alongside small parks. In the pages of education journals such as Kyōiku Jiron (The Educational Review) they described their visions to attach small parks to primary schools and create ‘social centres (sosharu sentaa)’ or ‘cultural centres (karuchua no chūshin)’ where children and adults could gather to exercise and play sport, as well as attend community gatherings such as lectures and other entertainment.Footnote 32 Educators drew inspiration from a range of different sources, including the latest international design trends and first-hand experiences travelling overseas. While investigating social education (shakai kyōiku) facilities in Chicago in 1913, for example, Tokyo Imperial University professor Yoshida Kumaji learned about the ‘playground movement’ which he translated into Japanese as undōjō mondai. In addition to observing how the city had transformed small plots of vacant land into parks with play equipment for children, he also learned about park management and design. According to Yoshida, one of the most treasured items he carried back to Japan was a set of blueprints for these small parks, presented to him ‘by a very kind gentleman at Washington Park’.Footnote 33 Upon returning to Japan, Yoshida published books, wrote journal articles and also embarked on a nationwide lecture tour in order to share the latest overseas trends with Japanese educators, such as the novel concept of schools as community centres.Footnote 34 Given the growing interest in expanding the role and use of schools in the community, and the desire to build small parks and playgrounds prior to the earthquake, it is no surprise that at the Seventh Imperial Education Association Conference held in late November 1923, delegates from prefectures throughout Japan formally recommended that small parks should adjoin Tokyo's reconstructed primary schools.Footnote 35
In the end, the number, size and location of parks in reconstructed Tokyo relied on one key factor: budget. On 20 December 1923, parliamentarians approved a reconstruction budget of ¥468 million to build new roads, bridges, canals and public parks, as well as the extensive project of land readjustment. This was a fraction of the four billion yen budget initially proposed by Home Minister Gotō Shinpei.Footnote 36 In addition to three new large parks, the budget included funding for 52 small parks, less than half of what education officials hoped for. The director of Tokyo's Education Department Sasaki Kichisaburō pleaded with the Reconstruction Institute to seize the opportunity and attach small parks to the remaining 67 schools. ‘I am confident that we would not regret such a far-sighted policy for one-hundred years to come’, he implored.Footnote 37 Much to his dismay, however, even the municipal government could not help purchase extra land due to budget constraints.Footnote 38 The Reconstruction Institute allocated a budget of ¥10,000,000 for the construction of 52 parks over a five-year period. Each park would measure 2,979 square metres (900 tsubo). The biggest expense was land. Officials estimated that the cost of purchasing approximately 154,246 square metres (46,600 tsubo) of privately owned land would be ¥9,000,000. They calculated that one tsubo (3.31 square metres) of land would cost an average ¥200. In fact, the most expensive land purchased was for Tokiwa Park in Nihonbashi (¥832 per tsubo), while the cheapest was for Ougibashi Park (¥170 per tsubo) in Fukagawa.
Given the budget limitations, a 10-member Special Committee for City Planning, which included Mayor Nagata Hidejirō and influential educator Sawayanagi Masatarō, carefully considered which of the 117 primary schools would benefit most from a small park. They prioritized schools on small plots of land in need of larger sports grounds, with the goal of distributing the parks evenly throughout Tokyo's neighbourhoods and attracting children who lived within a 500–600 metre radius.Footnote 39 On 23 May 1924, the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun announced the name and address of 52 schools and the size of the small parks to be built next to them. The parks were to be distributed throughout 10 wards as follows: Kōjimachi (1), Kanda (7), Nihonbashi (5), Kyōbashi (6), Shiba (2), Hongo (2), Shitaya (5), Asakusa (10), Honjo (8) and Fukagawa (6).Footnote 40Contrary to expectations, the announcement intensified public concern because the precise location and boundaries of the schools and parks were still to be determined by land readjustment authorities.
Land readjustment became the main method of acquiring private land for public infrastructure built as part of Tokyo's Reconstruction Project, as well as rationalizing irregular shaped plots of land. Although land readjustment had been used in rural Japan since the 1860s, it had only recently been introduced to urban areas following implementation of the 1919 City Planning Law.Footnote 41 One major difference between the 1919 law and the law enacted in December 1923 was the amount of compensation for landowners. According to a series of urban planning laws passed soon after the earthquake, the government gained authority to confiscate up to 10 per cent of private land without compensation if the end result was to use the land as public space. Landowners were only entitled to compensation at market value if the area of land confiscated exceeded 10 per cent.Footnote 42
Within five days of publishing the list of small parks, the newspaper received questions from concerned readers wanting to know how the planned schools and new parks would affect their land. In the daily column ‘Questions and answers about land readjustment’, a resident from Honjo ward, Mr Sakuma Tokushirō, wrote: ‘What will happen to those of us living on plots of land targeted for use as small parks in the forthcoming land readjustment project?’ Deputy Mayor Yoshida Shigeru replied, ‘An agreement will be reached with landowners and their land will be exchanged for another plot in the neighbourhood nearby.’Footnote 43 It is probably no coincidence that the Reconstruction Bureau produced an impressive blueprint, ‘representative of a small park attached to a primary school’, which the newspaper published on the next page.Footnote 44 Government officials hoped to win public support for land readjustment by reminding residents that these parks were for children.
Committees oversaw the process of land readjustment and exchange, and also handled appeals and disputes in every neighbourhood of Tokyo undergoing reconstruction. In Nihonbashi ward, for example, the rezoning committee, elected on 14 June 1924, received a request in favour of building a small park on the proposed site adjoining Chiyoda Primary School. The petition focused on improving health, education and physical training for children and local residents. Compared to other schools, they pointed out that Chiyoda Primary School would be further from the new large park, Hamachō Park, and children would need to ‘walk through traffic which is very dangerous’. Despite the government's efforts to win public support, not everyone wanted to lose their property for the sake of a small park. A petition signed by 60 residents of Nihonbashi Kodenmachō is one example of local opposition. The planned 2,900 square metre park situated near Jusshi Primary School required the residents and businesses of block 22-banchi Kodenmachō to relocate. In the process, a bridge would also be destroyed. ‘What will we gain from this? Only one small park’, they argued. The signatories of the petition reminded committee members that business owners lost their entire fortune in the fires, and many also lost their parents, wives and children. Despite significant hardships, victims returned because they were connected to their land and the location was good for business. Now, one year later, they argued, business was thriving. Planning authorities dismissed their petition and built Jusshi Park on the proposed site.Footnote 45 Negotiations for every plot of land in ruined Tokyo took longer than expected. Construction of parks did not begin until March 1925 and only 7 of the 52 parks were finished by the projected completion date of December 1928. The long and complicated process of land readjustment – employed for the first time in Japan's history to build urban parks – caused the construction of small parks to finish three years later than forecast and exceed the original budget by ¥4.4 million.Footnote 46
Cultivating children's health and fitness in school and leisure time
In November 1923, at the age of 39, Inoshita Kiyoshi became director of Tokyo's Parks Department. With his staff of 50, which included engineers, assistant engineers and administrative staff, Inoshita oversaw the reconstruction of Tokyo's parks.Footnote 47 Clearly, this was the highlight of his career. Writing in December 1930, Inoshita heralded Tokyo's small parks as not only a new ‘epoch’ in Tokyo's history, but also as a stunning example of modern park design in world history that had become ‘an object of wonder among foreign experts’.Footnote 48 Unlike many other failed dreams for Tokyo's reconstruction, post-disaster rhetoric on learning lessons from the Great Kantō Earthquake resulted in improvements to the built environment inhabited by children and efforts to protect them better in the event of future disasters. The reconstructed primary schools and attached small parks were showcases of modern architecture and innovative urban design. The three-storey reinforced concrete buildings with their shower facilities, flushing toilets, heated classrooms and spacious areas for children to play and exercise on the rooftop, indoor gymnasiums and adjacent parks, all signified the state's growing efforts to promote health and hygiene, and cultivate the moral and physical qualities of Tokyo's residents in the late 1920s. In doing so, they were attempting to reduce individual vulnerability and build social resilience.
The small parks became integral sites of outdoor education aimed at cultivating the health and fitness of school children. Typically located on the southern side of a school to maximize sunlight exposure, the average park measured 2,759 square metres. They ranged in size from 1,797 square metres as the smallest (Tawara Park in Asakusa ward) to 4,717 square metres as the largest (Tsukijima dai ni Park in Kyōbashi ward).Footnote 49 As originally intended, schools on small plots of land significantly benefited from the addition of a park. In Nihonbashi ward, for example, the sports ground of Hakozaki Primary School measured just 789 square metres. The construction of Hakozaki Park next door, however, added an extra 2,432 square metres and substantially increased the outdoor area for the school's 800 children to play and exercise.Footnote 50 On the other hand, Ogawa Primary School in Kanda ward did not have a small park attached to it because three other small parks – Kinka, Awaji and Kanda – were located nearby. In fact, the careful placement of the 52 parks meant that an additional 30 schools were located ‘near’ a park in Tokyo, at a distance specified as less than 327 metres (sanchō).Footnote 51 A large, flat open space (hiroba), usually rectangular in shape and spread with sand, occupied just over one third of the park space. Here, designers envisioned that teachers would conduct physical education classes, sport and group activities during school hours. They also hoped that children would use this area to play during recess and lunch breaks (Figure 2).
View of Nan’ō Park attached to Nan’ō Primary School in Shiba ward (Nihon Tōkei Fukyūkai (ed.), Teito Fukkō Jigyō Taikan (Survey of the Imperial Capital Reconstruction Project), vol. II (Tokyo, 1930)).
Education officials, eager to combat detrimental health effects associated with urban living, also sought to increase children's contact with nature. In 1920, the City of Tokyo began sending children described as having ‘a weak constitution’ to seaside schools for two to three weeks during the summer holiday. As officials themselves acknowledged, however, the short-term benefits of exposure to fresh air and sunshine were lost as soon as children returned to the ‘noise and bustle of the city’.Footnote 52 The small parks enabled children to experience nature on a daily basis. Ministry of Education bureaucrat Takada Yasuhiro recalled an episode walking through Tokyo's suburbs when he overheard a conversation that shocked him. Standing before a small vegetable garden was a middle-aged woman explaining to a girl aged 12 or 13, ‘Look! These are soybean plants. This is where our fermented soybeans (nattō) and cooked beans (nimame) come from.’ According to Takada, people living in cities had become so far removed from nature – dirt, air, sunshine – that children no longer knew what a field of beans looked like.Footnote 53 As well as serving an aesthetic purpose to beautify the neighbourhood, and a practical purpose to provide shade, he pointed out that the small parks expanded the traditional boundaries of the classroom in new and novel ways.
The City of Tokyo specified that children should be able to study botany in the parks and for this reason chose specimens that were also referred to in school textbooks.Footnote 54 A plantation of tall trees surrounded the circumference of the parks, predominantly evergreens, broadleaf trees, conifers and a variety of flowering trees, while evergreen shrubs and ornamental plants formed the undergrowth.Footnote 55 A total of 290 trees and 1,400 shrubs were planted in Nan’ō Park, for example. Among the 28 different varieties of trees were black pine, Himalayan cedar, plane trees, cherry trees and camellia. In 1932, the Ministry of Education created an Outdoor Education Department that was responsible for ‘outdoor guidance of children's daily life’.Footnote 56 The Outdoor Education Department encouraged children to learn outdoors, grow gardens in the school grounds and study plant life in the small parks. The small parks enabled policies such as these to be implemented.
For the first time in Tokyo's history, the small parks provided children with a dedicated space to play, close to their home, without being intimidated by adults or threatened by trains and cars. City officials urged children to use the parks in their leisure time, after school and on weekends. This was very different to the prevailing opinion in the early twentieth century when children were considered ‘unwanted sights’ in parks.Footnote 57 As founding members of the Japanese Children's Playground Association (Nihon jidō yūen kyōkai) established in 1929, Inoshita Kiyoshi and Sueda Masu explained that their goal was not only to promote the health benefits associated with play, but also to ‘rescue children from the hustle and bustle of the city’.Footnote 58 In 1931, 103 fatal traffic accidents involving children under the age of 15 were reported in Tokyo. An additional 6,643 children were injured. Most accidents were caused by cars and trains, and three-quarters of the victims were boys.Footnote 59 Without dedicated playgrounds, police officer Nishida Fukujirō warned that children would continue to play on the road and the number of traffic accidents would grow. He therefore urged municipal government officials to build even more small parks.Footnote 60
Parks and playground experts went to great efforts to attract children to parks and keep them safe. The small parks were designed as spaces where children could be children. Every park featured a playground which covered approximately 10 per cent of the park area. In addition to a sandpit, each park was equipped with steel play equipment manufactured in America, such as a slide, see-saw, jungle gym climbing frame, swings and horizontal bars. For many children living in the outlying neighbourhoods of Tokyo, it was their first time to see a slide or play in a sandpit. As well as educating children, child experts also used the parks to study children and monitor their behaviour. Sueda Masu described her surprise as she toured new playgrounds and watched children play. After many years supervising at the Hibiya Playground, Sueda grew accustomed to watching children play in the sand pit and make animals in the shape of rabbits and tortoises. By comparison, Sueda found the children from Tokyo's reconstructed industrial districts, such as Honjo and Fukagawa, proved less creative and did not know many games to play in the park space. She recalled watching a group of children pile sand into the shape of a mountain and then make grooves in the sand to roll marbles down. The children were competing to see who could roll their marble the furthest. When she looked closely, however, she was shocked to find that children were actually gambling by placing bets. ‘Why are you playing those marble games?’ Sueda asked. The children replied, ‘There's nothing else to play.’ Likewise, children running around in the open space only knew how to play two or three games such as tag (onigokko) or hide-and-seek (kakurenbo). When teaching children how to play games, however, Sueda claimed that children did not listen properly or follow instructions. These observations reinforced her view of children from impoverished suburbs as ‘rough’ and in need of guidance. Sueda therefore organized monthly patrols by park supervisors to conduct games and activities.Footnote 61 Playground supervisors taught children how to make shapes in the sandpit by filling buckets with sand, and also taught them how to play new games such as dead-ball and jumping rope. In addition, they organized children's gatherings (kodomokai) in the parks with events such as storytelling and traditional picture story shows (kamishibai).
A new era: promoting parks as places of rest, recreation and refuge
In the post-earthquake period, Inoshita Kiyoshi envisioned the dawn of a new era in Tokyo's history whereby people of all ages visited parks daily. In order to achieve this, however, he believed it was necessary for government officials to educate the public about how to use the small parks. Writing in the journal Toshi Mondai (Urban Problems) in March 1925, Inoshita pointed out that Tokyo's first parks were originally designed as a place to enjoy scenery. Park users were mostly adults who visited on holidays, special occasions or when the weather was fine. Often this coincided with festivals such as the New Year, or seasonal displays of cherry blossoms in April or chrysanthemums in November.Footnote 62 According to Inoshita, people did not think of visiting parks ordinarily in their daily life, and the concept of visiting a park to preserve one's health or restore one's spirits was completely foreign. Partly, he believed, this was because parks were too far away from where people lived and therefore necessitated that people travel long distances. He also suggested that existing park facilities were unattractive to visitors and no longer compatible with the needs of city life. In reconstructed Tokyo, Inoshita envisioned busy people on their way to work walking through the parks, enjoying the beautiful greenery and shade from the trees and breathing the clean air. He wanted people to think of parks as a place for rest and recreation, where they could rest their tired eyes and relax their overworked mind and body. If they had time, he wrote, people could sit on the bench in the shade of the trees and read a newspaper. In June 1925, shortly after writing this article, Inoshita embarked on an eleven-month overseas tour of parks in cities including Paris, London and Chicago. While the overseas tour left a big impression, Inoshita's thinking about the role and use or even the design of small parks did not change. If anything, the overseas tour galvanized his quest to promote parks in daily life.Footnote 63
Inoshita's visions for parks were closely aligned with the government's goals aimed at promoting social education. The Tokyo municipal government described social education (shakai kyōiku) as an ‘educational activity [that] may be carried out at leisure’. In other words, ‘people who are engaged in business can utilize their spare hours; children, pupils, and students at school can make use of hours other than those required for their school study’. The method of reaching people ranged from lectures and speeches, to pamphlets and posters, as well as music, parks and gardens that ‘appeal to the senses’. Importantly, the activities were free.Footnote 64 Tokyo's small parks, therefore, incorporated various features to attract adults throughout the day. According to Inoshita, the focal point for adults was the rest area. The designs differed from park to park. Some were in the style of a traditional gazebo or arbor (azumaya), while others were a simple pergola with a wisteria trellis. All of them were designed with adult users in mind to provide an attractive place to sit and rest in the shade, while enjoying views of the surrounding greenery. The elevated structures were also designed as a stage for musical performances and community entertainment. Other amenities included public toilets and drinking fountains. Light poles dotted around the park encouraged people to visit at night. Throughout the 1920s, Inoshita used a variety of media including public lectures, newspapers and radio to promote the new aims of the parks. In a segment called ‘Lectures on home life’ broadcast on JOAK radio in 1926, for example, Inoshita promoted the 52 small parks as places for children and parents to enjoy throughout the day. He called on people to recognize the necessity of parks and maintain public support for their construction.Footnote 65 These efforts to influence people's daily life and leisure time in parks and other venues outside the home complemented similar efforts by social reformers such as the Seikatsu kaizen dōmeikai (Everyday Life Reform Movement) who sought to influence people's lifestyles, clothing, furniture and architecture inside the home.Footnote 66
Once the parks began to open in steady succession between 1929 and 1931, municipal government officials doubled their efforts to promote the parks. In addition to raising public awareness via opening ceremonies, the City of Tokyo Parks Department published a guide for every park (kōen annai). The roughly A4 size pamphlet folded in two and printed in monochrome colours such as blue, brown, purple or green typically displayed a photograph of a pergola on the front cover. On the back, a site plan drawn to scale (1:600) with a simple compass rose pointing north and linear scale measuring distance in both metric and Japanese units (ken) showed the park in relation to the adjacent primary school and entrances from the surrounding roads. The plan was marked with dots showing the location of electric light poles, as well as the letters A to J. A key listed these features: rest area (kyūkeijo), wisteria pergola (fujidana), outdoor stage (rodan), horizontal bars (tetsubō), slide and sandpit (suberidai oyobi sunajō), swings (buranko), gardener's storage shed (entei tsumesho), public toilet (benjo), drinking fountain (inyō suisen) and flag pole (hatazao).Footnote 67 The pamphlet opened to show a full-page perspective drawing of the park together with useful information for park-users. The guide for Nan’ō Park in Shiba ward, for example, listed public transport access to the park. Visitors could walk 180 metres north-west from the Atago tram stop, or 620 metres west from the Shinbashi train station. The guide also listed the number and names of all the trees and shrubs planted in the park. Officials highlighted several safety features such as a low fence bordering the road so that people could climb over in an emergency and water supplies in the event of fire. Accompanying text explicitly stated how park designers wanted people to use the park. It read:Footnote 68
The aim of this park is to provide a place for people living in this area to rest and a place for children to play. It also supplements the primary school sport ground and can be used as an outdoor teaching space. In addition it can be used for outdoor gatherings and as a place of refuge in an emergency. Enjoy using this small park to the utmost. We also request that you care for its facilities.
The state increasingly intended to use the small parks to further their goals of social management.Footnote 69 In 1930, the City of Tokyo published a poster illustrating how people of all ages could use the new parks throughout the day. Entitled ‘A Day in a Reconstructed Small Park’ (Fukkō shōkōen no ichinichi), the poster contains eight scenes of people enjoying different activities (Figure 3). The focus on time is striking. Divided into morning and afternoon, a clock face accompanies each illustration and captions describe activities that people could enjoy at two-hour intervals from 6am until 8pm. For example, children play on the swings and slides at 8am, at 12 noon adults rest on the benches, at 6pm families stroll through the park after dinner and at 8pm the community gathers for an outdoor performance.Footnote 70 The poster listed five different ways that people could use the parks: to preserve their health, as a children's playground, as an extension of the school ground, as a public space, and as a place of refuge in an emergency.
Poster advertising how to spend a day in a small park (Nihon Tōkei Fukyūkai (ed.), Teito Fukkō Jigyō Taikan (Survey of the Imperial Capital Reconstruction Project), vol. II (Tokyo, 1930)).
Studies of the early twentieth-century City Beautiful movement in America have shown that the aim of establishing parks was not only to improve the physical environment of cities, but also ‘to influence the heart, mind, and purse strings of the citizen’.Footnote 71 In his study of urban history and moral reform in America, for example, Paul Boyer showed how parks assumed an important social and moral role in influencing the daily lives of local residents.Footnote 72 Similarly, Japanese urban planners envisioned that the small parks in Tokyo would adopt an important social and moral role. In a special commemorative volume published in English to celebrate Tokyo's reconstruction and no doubt impress overseas audiences, the municipal government described parks as ‘the lungs of a city’, and a place where city people could ‘enjoy the scenery and a touch of nature’. While genuine social reformist and progressive motives influenced the desires of city authorities to provide a pleasant environment for residents, the parks, like the new schools, were also designed as spaces that would further the aims of the state. City officials viewed parks as urban cleansers or antidotes that would assist authorities to counter social trends they believed were corrupting the moral values of Japanese society. ‘It scarcely needs saying that the evils of modern cities arise principally from congested living conditions’, officials proclaimed in the volume. ‘The park is an important social institution that serves to remove or at least alleviate these evils.’Footnote 73 Elsewhere, municipal government officials described the green space as a ‘separate universe’ that people could retreat to and ‘completely escape the surrounding troubles and chaos’. The parks were a ‘small paradise’ which local residents could use at their leisure.Footnote 74 Inoshita Kiyoshi's long-term hopes for the parks are evident from an article he wrote in 1930, toward the end of the project to reconstruct Tokyo. Inoshita predicted that the true value of the parks would be determined by how they were used in the future. If city officials maintained the parks, and people continued to flock to the parks, Inoshita believed that the parks had the potential to emit eternal brightness throughout Tokyo.
Conclusion
In the aftermath of the 1923 earthquake, small parks became an ideal solution to perceived problems of urban modernity, Tokyo's vulnerabilities, and the young demographic nature of the capital. Japan's urban planners, landscape architects, educators and child experts projected their hopes for healthy children and residents on to small parks, much like their counterparts elsewhere in the world. It is important to note, in a field heavily influenced by teleological approaches that view history back from the trauma of World War II, that small parks were not designed or conceptualized as spaces for mobilization or the militarization of Japan's youth in mind or body.Footnote 75 Moreover, as Thomas Havens points out, ‘Nowhere in this official rhetoric was any mention of physical strength for potential military purposes.’Footnote 76 By the mid-1930s, however, the parks increasingly became sites in which the state could project aims of more intrusive and assertive social management and suasion.
How the parks were actually used throughout the 1930s is a welcome area for additional research. A cursory glance through the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun reveals that the original architects and visionaries of the 52 small parks continued to promote the health and lifestyle benefits of parks in daily life for children and adults. Inoshita Kiyoshi gave public lectures and wrote articles advocating for more parks to be built, especially in Tokyo's outlying wards (yamanote).Footnote 77 In 1933, the Tokyo municipal government presented Inoshita with an award to recognize his contribution to Tokyo's parks throughout his 28-year career. This was the second time he received such an award.Footnote 78 Likewise, Sueda Masu continued to organize children's gatherings (kodomokai) and regular patrols of the small parks. In early 1935, the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun published a daily column promoting women in new workplaces. Entitled ‘Smiling brightly as they work’, a photograph showed a female park supervisor playing with a group of children and described how women visited at least two parks per day to supervise children and offer guidance on how to play safely.Footnote 79
Ultimately, however, big designs for these small parks in prime locations throughout the capital were malleable. By the mid-1930s, darkness began to descend over Inoshita's hopes for eternal brightness as Tokyo's small parks were increasingly used as sites to mobilize citizens for war. In late 1936, parks featured in two very different articles published by the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun. Beginning from 1 November, the newspaper announced, a series of events would be held in the 52 small parks aimed at helping children ‘play well together’. Two weeks later, another headline read ‘Model bombs in 35 locations, a spectacle in small parks.’Footnote 80 By 1941, the newspaper informed people how they could use small parks in the imperial capital to cultivate vegetables.Footnote 81 Tokyo's small parks became microcosms of larger developments in Japanese state and society that reflected the needs and eventually the harsh realities of people living in an ever-changing urban environment.
Author ORCIDs
Janet Borland, 0000-0002-8727-4287
