This paper presents an overall picture of “Host Town” projects conducted for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games based on the analysis of the results of a questionnaire survey of registered municipalities. The Host Town policy recruits local governments from all over Japan to provide pre-games camps for athletes from all over the world to promote international exchanges. According to the 226 questionnaires returned, 60% of respondents indicated that the main purpose of the project was to hold a pre-games camp, and 40% indicated that it was to promote international exchanges. In the business plan for each Host Town project, sports training was planned at 70%, exchange programs through sports at 70%, and welcome parties at 60%. The municipalities covered the travel and lodging expenses of athlete delegations in Japan, half of the municipalities did not make any facility improvements associated with the project, and many did not reallocate staff. Some inconsistencies were identified: Host Town projects were planned around the time when decisions were being made on the eligibility of athletes of the partner country/region to compete, while exchange programs were conducted when the athletes should have been concentrating on the competition.

This study provides an overview of regional differences and their trends in recent population census responses. Specifically, we analyzed the relationship between the response rates and the degree of urbanization at prefectural level. The results showed that: 1) While the unit nonresponse rates and their regional differences had increased since 2005, the urban–rural differences appeared almost unchanged or even narrowed in the 2020 census (estimated values). 2) The collection rates of census enumerators (i.e., submitting in person) decreased due to the COVID-19 pandemic and were partially replaced by mailed responses rather than Internet responses. These had a relatively greater impact in rural areas. 3) The percentages of unreported cases among foreign residents were generally higher than those among Japanese citizens, and the degree of regional differences was large and had been widening in recent years. In short, we found that the urban–rural differences in the population census responses were consistent, while the response rates and their regional differences varied by indicator, survey year, and nationality (Japanese/foreign). Researchers should be aware of the spurious regional differences caused by nonresponses when they utilize census data for empirical studies.

By multiplying the national age–occupation-specific share of teleworking employees obtained from the national survey on teleworking by each municipality’s age–occupation-specific number of employees obtained from the population census, this paper estimates the share of teleworking employees on a small spatial scale. The pattern of the estimated share of teleworking employees exhibits a west-high/east-low contrast, along with a higher rate in metropolitan than in nonmetropolitan areas. This pattern is underpinned by the fact that municipalities’ share of blue-collar employees also shows an opposite west–east contrast. Employees engaged in service, few of whom are teleworkers, are distributed evenly within the country, irrespective of the level of each municipality’s share of teleworking employees. The results indicate the necessity not only to focus on the spatial discrepancy of opportunity to secure teleworkable jobs but also to delve into possible disparities within a locality where stable, high-income jobs for teleworkers are sustained by poorly paid essential workers whose unstable jobs are difficult to undertake through teleworking.

This paper analyzes a frontal impact accident of a limited express train on the Kintetsu Railway Osaka line in 1971 as a case study of railway accidents that have prompted little interest compared to natural disasters. The results clarified three points: 1) the railway line had been constructed with some sloped sections for economic reasons (including construction costs and the cost of excavating the Aoyama tunnel); 2) the Kaito signal station had been constructed for up-trains on a slope section;, and 3) its security systems were woefully inadequate for down-trains. Since some of the villages that were originally located along this interval had been remotely relocated by the railway line, communication during an emergency was generally insufficient, and it was difficult for rescue workers to reach the area quickly due to its remote location.

It is essential to examine individuals’ overall quality of life using a generic index of perceived accessibility to a set of destinations in their everyday lives. This study thus investigated the correlation between the Sense of Accessibility (SA; that is, residents’ overall feelings of [in]convenience in their everyday lives) without a vehicle, objective Walkability Index (WI), and neighborhood environment and personal factors, considering current trends in urban policy to reduce people’s reliance on the automobile. The estimated results of ordinary regression models demonstrated that WI scores were almost consistently and positively correlated with SA. Among the WI components, population density was strongly associated with SA. Gender, age, and household structure were differently associated with SA depending on the frequency of car usage. These results support current urban policy trends to some extent, while they also suggest that some individuals need assistance to adapt to new lifestyles without cars.

This paper examines official documents, newspaper articles, guidebooks, and other materials to understand the formative process and distribution of hot-spring bathhouses in Tokyo from the 1870s to the 1890s. It also considers the significance of hot-spring bathhouses as places in a contemporary social context. In Tokyo, bathhouses claiming to be hot springs appeared in the first half of the 1870s and became popular as a symbol of “enlightenment” (kaika) from the mid-1870s onward. These were artificial hot springs that included medicinal baths, baths with springwater piped in from a hot-spring source, and baths with added hot-spring mineral deposits. Improvements were also made in bathing facilities that had been troubling in terms of public morals and hygiene. In 1877, there were 44 bathhouses in Tokyo spread across built-up areas and their neighborhoods. In 1885, 178 bathhouses were concentrated in built-up areas, with some also reaching into the outer city limits. In 1897, as the bathhouses were cleared out, those located in the outer limits of built-up areas became more prominent. Those hot-spring bathhouses emerged as places of convenient recreation where people could recuperate away from the busy city center.

This paper clarifies the process of establishing a volunteer culture, and its effects on the volunteers and the city after the 12th Asian Games in Hiroshima, 1994. In 2001, the Hiroshima City Office established a sporting event volunteer system in response to growing interest in volunteering after the games. The system was established thanks in part to the creation of a national sports support policy and growing opportunities for volunteer activities such as sporting events and local club matches. The project has had positive impacts on both the volunteers and community, and therefore it is regarded as a “good” project. However, the evaluation was received because the system was changed from being government led to citizen centered, and various citizens other than athletes have participated voluntarily over a long period of time.

This paper focuses on the “Regional Future Projections” proposed in the Report on the Local Administration System Necessary to Respond to Emerging Issues from around 2040 released by the 32nd Local System Research Council in June 2020. This study conducted a questionnaire survey of municipalities in the Tokyo metropolitan area regarding their fiscal management and used quantification theory III to examine the relationships among awareness of the financial situation, future projections, and wide-area cooperation. The findings of this study can be summarized as follows. 1) Municipalities that recognize their financial situation as healthy and conduct long-term future forecasting tend to be reluctant to engage in wide-area cooperation. 2) Despite the perceived need for future projections around 2040, many municipalities tend not to make such projections or only make short-term ones. 3) In the case of wide-area cooperation in finance, there are differences in awareness among the constituent municipalities. The above findings suggest that the national government and prefectures need to provide support to municipalities in fiscal forecasting, and that the exchange of information through horizontal cooperation among municipalities is important in regional future projections.

This paper discusses COVID-19 infection prevention and control measures, support measures for food and beverage service activities from early 2020 to early 2022, and how those measures affected the town center policy in the UK. Early in the pandemic, the government created several types of support schemes for food and beverage service activities because it had a negative attitude toward imposing lockdowns. Subsequently, lockdowns and a variety of other restrictions were imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The government also temporarily changed certain functions of city planning institutes as support measures for food and beverage service activities, some of which evolved into formal measures for the post-COVID-19 era. These measures were intended to make it easier to change establishment use in order to create thriving town centers in the post-COVID-19 era. This shows that UK government took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to make fundamental changes in its town center policy.

While the concentration of branch offices, which has played an important role in the central economic management function of cities, is expected to shrink with the development of information and communication technology, it has not necessarily decreased at present. In this paper, the author attempts to understand the trends in the location of branch offices from 2009 to 2019 by including unlisted firms, which often do not have a nationwide presence, after pointing out problems in the observations of previous studies. The results show that the advantages of regional urban centers and the number of corporate branch offices are supported by firms expanding into new areas, while the overall number of branches is decreasing. In Osaka, the author found that the shift to branch economies has been progressing, resulting in a stable number of branch offices and an increase in the number of branch office employees, suggesting that new firms are entering the area due to the large demand for specialized services and services corresponding to the needs of large cities.

We propose that an appreciation of traditional entomophagy cultures can lead to an essential understanding of biological resource use, including the relationship between the environment and humans. We conducted after-school lectures on entomophagy with insect-tasting opportunities for high school students. We also analyzed high school students’ experiences and perceptions of entomophagy and the effects of the lectures. Although many students were aware of the proposal by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that entomophagy could be a solution to food scarcity, there was a misconception that people in areas with traditional entomophagy eat insects only because of food shortages. After the lectures with tasting sessions, many students developed a positive sociocultural view of entomophagy. Contrary to expectations, high school students in the Tono region of Gifu prefecture, where a traditional insect-eating culture still exists today, were more resistant to insect eating than those in another region. Many students commented that they realized that people eat insects because they taste good and that entomophagy is an initiative to enhance their daily diet. The lectures not only gave students an understanding of different cultures but also an attitude of respect for their own and others’ cultural traditions.

This study examined challenges associated with the changing needs of community welfare. Since the late 1990s, the Asahi district of the city of Kochi, Kochi prefecture, has been redeveloped from an agglomerated area of paper factories to a more mixed neighborhood dominated by newcomers and aging wooden housing. The local residents have various community welfare needs, including limited access to bathing facilities, a high population of elderly people living alone, indigent and isolated households, and children in unstable environments. A local governance model was developed while placing the independent-minded stance of citizens at its core. This model is characterized by the representative leadership of community organizations, improvements in profitability, and cooperation with other institutions. Thus, the relationship of community organizations with local government shifted from opposition to cooperation. This example suggests that it is necessary to explore the renewal of local governance on multiple geographic scales and, in the process, to redefine the role of government.