The Inhabitants and the Citizens of Tokyo

Abstract

The main theme of this paper is which relations exist actually or should exist in the future between the actors in the city and its citizens, who have the right to control the city. In other words, the actors themselves are not always the “masters of the city”, because of the separation between the daytime and the nighttime population in urban municipalities.
According to the definition of Japanese democracy, the masters should be the inhabitants, who have the right to participate in decision about the urban future. They must also be citizens who elect their representatives, examining and modifying the scenario of urban planning which is proposed by specialists. But one of the serious problems in Tokyo is that the nighttime population is decreasing in the central part of the city, and the inhabitants of the suburbs are losing their feeling of being citizens of the large city, because they have to travel such a long distance to work in the center of the city.
Using the levels of participation and demand, the author proposes four types of inhabitans; traditional, indifferent, claimant and modern types. If the type with consciousness of being a citizen continues to decrease, the city will possibly decline into a sort of slum or ruin with a deteriorating environment where nobody can find any inhabitants in terms of the classic definition.