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Abstract: Industrial growth in Japan''s largest cities has followed patterns that are distinctive, and are significantly different from those that have been adduced in the recent literature on North America. This paper focuses on Tokyo, and in particular its north-eastern part, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that a process of ‘industrial urbanisation’ occurred in Japan''s capital city, a process that was shaped by the existence of a large proto-industrial base and sophisticated consumer economy and characterised by dynamic but disorderly growth in factories largely supplying consumer goods to the urban market. The paper reviews the disparate, not to say confused, nature of industrial growth in Tokyo, noting the variety in factory size and products as well as production methods. Central to the argument of this paper is that industrialisation preceded attempts at urban planning and that the processes of industrialisation and urbanisation occurred concurrently, laying the base thereby for the large mixed-function districts that became a common feature of Japanese cities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923 did enormous damage to industries in Tokyo Prefecture. Around 40% of the buildings in Tokyo Prefecture were completely burnt or destroyed. In this paper, we investigate whether this temporary shock had a persistent impact on the spatial distribution of industries in Tokyo, using ward- and county-level panel data for industrial workers. It was found that while the earthquake caused mean shifts in the shares and numbers of workers, these mean shifts disappeared by the early 1930s. On the other hand, the earthquake caused shifts in the trends in the share and number of workers. The combined effects of these mean shifts and trend shifts were persistent for both the shares and the numbers of workers. The earthquake caused especially serious damage to the old industrial clusters in the southeast of Tokyo, and provided an opportunity for newly developing industrial clusters in non-damaged areas to take over the market. Further, the people and the local governments in non-damaged areas made an effort to take advantage of this opportunity to attract factories. Arguably, these forces made the impact of the earthquake on the spatial distribution of industry persistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports the results of a 2007 survey of corporate managers’ views on payout policy on Japanese firms listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange from four industries. The findings show that firms attach more importance to stable dividends than to performance linked dividends and they believe that dividends should be paid after investment spending and strengthening of the balance sheet are met. The reasons for an increase in dividends in recent years is due to consideration of fair returns to shareholders and of preventing hostile takeovers. This is a change from the traditional view on payout policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]