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More than in most countries, urbanization has overwhelmed Japan. Only 20 years ago, 60% of the population was tied to the farm, and Japan still had to import rice; today, as a result of agricultural advances, only 18% of the Japanese people are needed to feed the country and produce a surplus. The dispossessed farmers cram the cities, and the cities have been woefully shortchanged. The "Tokaido Corridor," a slender, 366-mile coastal belt running along the Pacific from Tokyo to Kobe, was long celebrated for its beauty in misty wood-block prints and delicate, 17-syllable haiku. Today, with 50% of the population crammed into the corridor, it is a smog-covered slurb.
Travelers jetting in by night first see Tokyo from miles out, an explosion of light against Honshu's black mountain ridges. By day, the world's largest metropolis (pop. 11.4 million) is a hazy brown and gray sprawl. Prosperity has only worsened Tokyo's housing shortage, its snarled traffic, and the soot that boils in across the brown Sumida River from the blast furnaces of Kawasaki, which has 3,000 industrial plants and a population of 940,000. Two-thirds of Tokyo is still without sewers; residents are served by "honeybucket" men, trucks and a "night-soil fleet" of disposal ships, some as big as 1,000 tons, that make daily dumping trips offshore. "Don't worry," a crewman smiles, "the Black Current will take it all toward the U.S."
When the wind blows in from Tokyo Bay, the downtown area is enveloped in the aroma from "Dream Island," an ironically named landfill project that grows by 7,800 tons of waste a day. The city is trying to reduce its overhanging pall of smog by persuading homeowners and industrialists to switch from coal to fuel oil (at a cost of increased carbon monoxide). But a 15th century samurai's poem boasting that the city "commands a view of soaring Fuji" is now a wry joke.
Tokyo's ebullient konton (confusion) can be attractive, and the city has proved an irresistible magnet to Japanese and foreigners alike. It has vitality, diversity and unexpected touches of beauty everywhere—in a tiny rock garden, a sprig of cherry blossoms, a full moon reflected in the still waters of the imperial moat. Manhattan-style muggings are virtually unknown. Still, the city's main problem, says Mayor Ryokichi Minobe, is "too many people." New York City, with 128 sq. ft. of park space per resident, is a verdant paradise compared with Tokyo, which has 7 sq. ft. Real estate values have risen 670% in a decade in some parts of town, and now rival Manhattan's—despite fears that anything built on the land may one day come tumbling down. Mild tremors hit the city almost every day, and experts fret that 3,000,000 would die in another earthquake like the one that flattened the city in 1923. Yet since the 100-ft. limitation on buildings was done away with in 1962, because of new, supposedly quake-resistant construction techniques, the Japanese have been challenging fate; now abuilding is one office tower of 40 stories, another of 46. Why