Abstract
According to the popular view, the central place theory became popular after the Second World War in academic circles of Japanese geographers. Hideaki Ishikawa, a town-planner official at the Department of the Interior, who was engaged in national land planning during the Second World War, proposed a theory of life-area or seikatsuken accounting for the self-similarity of settlement structures as in the central place theory. Although the system of life-area theory is not as sophisticated as that of the central place theory, both theories are similar since they posit the hexagonal structure of settlement arrangement. This paper explores the likelihood of propagation of the central place theory in prewar Japan, with reference to the life-area theory, and examines the relationship between the central place theory and Japanese national land planning.
Of various theories on national land planning then proposed in Japan, Ishikawa's was unique in that it definitely dealt with city distribution, which had originally derived from his decentralization plan for Tokyo: a center with 200, 000 inhabitants, supplying monthly-purchased goods, is located at the center of its circular service area with a radius of 45km; within this monthly-life center's service area, six weekly-life centers with 50, 000 to 100, 000 inhabitants, each of which covers a circular service area with a radius of 15km, are uniformly located around the monthly-life center; the spatial arrangement of the weekly-life center, its service area, and six daily-life centers with 20, 000 inhabitants, each covering a circular service area with a radius of 5km, follows the same self-similar structure.
As far as the author knows, the life-area theory was first presented at the third National Conference on Population Problems in November 1939. The schema of the life-area is morphologically similar to the central place system in terms of the marketing principle that the central places concerned are removed every other hierarchical level, that is the k=3 system with some unserved areas. It is unknown whether Ishikawa deduced this independently or by referring to already existing theories. Based on a review of the relevant literature, the author speculates that if there was any theoretical framework influencing Ishikawa, as for spatial arrangement of settlements, Ebenezer Howard's plan of Garden City can be considered as a model, and as for the hierarchical structure of settlements, Gottfried Feeler's plan of Neue Stadt or New Town is another one.
In autumn 1941, the architecture-planner official Goro Ito, who had been dispatched to Germany by the Department of the Interior and had just returned home, reported that the same schema of settlement location consisting of four hierarchical levels of Gaustadt or prefectural city, Kreisstadt or county town, Marktflecken or market town, and Dorf or village prevailed in German national land planning. As confessed by Ishikawa himself, this German version of the life-area theory gave support to his theory. Taking into account the facts that Christaller reformulated his original theory to contrive a new schema of central place location in which the marketing, administrative and transportation principles interplay, and that this schema was being applied to lay out settlement location in the occupied areas of East, Poland, then it is suggested that the German schema of life-area could be closely related with Christaller's new schema of central place location. The model plan of settlement location which Ito brought home might be a case in which Christaller's new schema was further adjusted in applying it to the real world. Through Nazi-German national land planning, the central place theory was informally “imported” to Japan during the Second World War while Japanese geographers, most of whom were not concerned with national land planning, did not yet notice these circumstances.
