Blackwell Reference Online

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“Traditional consumption city” is one of the categories introduced by Susumu Kurasawa (1968) in his typology of Japanese cities in the early 1960s. His typology emphasizes that the patterns of historical development of cities determine their distinctive social structures. The traditional consumption city refers to cities founded during the feudal era. A contrasting type is the industrial cities that developed largely during the modernization that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868. (For simplicity, the following description has been updated, although the typology remains essentially the same as Kurasawa's original.) The traditional consumption cities had, and many still have, castles that served as both the residence and offices for the feudal domain lords designated by the shogunate. In the Tokugawa era (1603–1867), those cities were financially sustained by tributes that were paid by the peasants of the domain and were inhabited by merchants and craftsmen who were largely dependent on the expenditures of the lords. After the Meiji Restoration, some of these cities became the seats of prefectural governments. Kurasawa categorized the new prefectural seats as type A, other traditional consumption cities as type B. In type A, the prefectural governments provide a financial basis for the city. Other public agencies such as the prosecutor's office, courts, Legal Affairs Bureau, ... log in or subscribe to read full text