Tokyo from the fire: War, occupation, and the remaking of a metropolis

This dissertation examines the effects of war and occupation on Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Following the appearance of modern Tokyo in the 1920s, competing imperial and international approaches to the city gradually gave way to a wartime metropolis. The experience of everyday life in Tokyo dramatically changed with munitions-based heavy industrialization and the loss of liberties and urban culture as the state mobilized for total war. The sensitive issue of how to defend the capital from air attack then became a pressing concern for urban planners, government officials, and even fiction writers. While the government assigned Tokyoites the responsibility of protecting the Imperial capital, devastating American fire bombing raids revealed in an instant the impossibility of carrying out such a task. A destroyed metropolis then became the base from which the United States under auspices of the Allied Powers occupied and administered Japan for several years. During this period there emerged two Tokyos. In one, the occupiers appropriated and transformed key sections of the city in ways that allowed them to partake in the spoils of war and live in luxury. In the other, Tokyoites struggled to stave off starvation and to secure housing and employment. After a long interval of silence, private memories of the catastrophic fire bombings became public when air raid survivors and others joined together to write a history of the raids and then attempt to build a museum from which to transmit the experience of war.