Japan: The Big Fuji Apple

Japan occupies a small space but holds a whole bunch of people. With only 377,835 square kilometers of land, 127,463,611 people reside in Japan. That means that Japan has about a little less area than California but holds about half of the entire United States’ population! Obviously, Japan has a very dense population. But how does this affect their life? Since Japan has some of the densest areas in the world because of their small space (and large population), life in these areas remains very crowded (physically and socially), and cities provide little communication among people.

The land prices come as a direct result of the amount of people in and around crowded regions. Since areas have so many people searching for land, prices go up. This simply exhibits the laws of supply and demand, which, in a market system, act just as naturally as the wind and the sun. When people want something and not enough of that which they want remains available, suppliers raise the price to both increase their prices to the amount at which people will buy all of their goods. As Ronald Dolan and Robert Worden wrote in their book, Japan: A Country Study: Between 1955 and 1989, land prices in the six largest cities increased 15,456 percent. Yet Tokyo still remains attractive to young people entering the workforce or seeking education.

The effect of such stressful environments with all these people creates a lack of social interaction among people. In a farm village or a small suburb, almost everyone has a relationship with everyone else. In small communities, people date others and have best friends which entwine the whole community into inter-connected relationships. Cities tend to take away from that. If you walk on a street with 3,000 people, you do not really feel inclined to approach them or learn about them or really have a relationship with them. Life begins to have more to do with yourself and your own success than the happiness associated with friendships, love, and compassion. As the UCLA Asia Institute explains the amount of people:

“One way to comprehend just how crowded Japan’s big cities can be is to unfold a couple sheets of newspaper and lay them on the floor. Adjust them so they occupy about a square meter of space. Then stand in the middle of the newspaper and invite four friends to join you on the newspaper. During rush hour, the Tokyo-Yokohama subway system has about five people per square meter.”

Things in such crowded cities take attention away from things on the personal level and put a strong focus on the drive for power and money. People lose a special touch of togetherness in such crowded areas especially in such developed settings.

Population density in Japan has come as a result of high population growths in earlier years and also newfound economic power in the country (in urban areas). Life in the big cities has thus become very much like the big cities in America. People find themselves with much fewer connections but much greater wealth. Since Japan has so many people and so little space, a society full of relationships and compassions has turned into a society that pulls away from anything on the personal level as well as that which can not hold its people. The price increases for land just prove that Japan can not hold all these people in the urban areas and must either create new urban areas or keep jacking up prices.