Kyoto people: don’t we already have two capitals in this country?
Nara people: We already had two capitals! Three is more than enough already!
Kyoto governor (mayor?) actually said this. They aren’t going to be advocating to become a second capitol because they already are one.
The governors of Osaka, Fukuoka and Aichi have expressed interest. “Aichi Prefecture and Nagoya possess all the functions necessary to serve as a second capital. I’m the first in the nation to make a bid,” Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura said. Fukuoka Governor Seitaro Hattori added Friday: “We will aim for the designation as ‘all Fukuoka’ by working with municipalities and the local business community.”
For purely historical value, I gotta say Kyoto.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto
Kyoto is one of the oldest municipalities in Japan, having been chosen in 794 as the new seat of Japan’s imperial court by Emperor Kanmu. …The emperors of Japan ruled from Kyoto in the following eleven centuries until 1869…The capital was relocated from Kyoto to Tokyo after the Meiji Restoration.
searches
Aw yeah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_of_Japan
As of 2007, there is a movement to transfer the government functions of the capital from Tokyo while retaining Tokyo as the de facto capital, with the Gifu-Aichi region, the Mie-Kio region and other regions submitting bids for a de jure capital. Officially, the relocation is referred to as “capital functions relocation” instead of “capital relocation”, or as “relocation of the Diet and other organizations”.[19][20]
In 2023, the Government of Japan moved the Agency for Cultural Affairs to Kyoto. This was the first time that a central government office has been relocated outside Tokyo since Tokyo was designated as the capital.[21][22]
Tokyo means “Eastern Capital” in English. The name comes from two Japanese parts: tō (east) and kyō (capital).
Kyoto translates to capital city.
Kyoto already said they aren’t interested.
They should designate Matsumoto City as the new capital, then after a few years start construction on an entirely new fortress city on the current site of the town of Hakone.
I understood this reference. Japan is 25 years late according to schedule but better than never!
For those who don’t: it’s a big rabbit hole. Search for 第2新東京市
Hakone is so nice though ;-;
There is so much of this that screams it’s a waste of my taxpayer money. Disaster recovery is good, but we don’t need a whole-assed second capital that, presumably, is going to not be otherwise useful. I also think moving it anywhere south, particularly toward the humid sea-of-japan side, rather than north is dumb.
If Osaka, Nagoya, or whatever want to structure their internal government more like Tokyo, that’s a completely separate matter and what they do internally isn’t of consequence to me.
Tokyo-3 should be built underground for the best disaster recovery preparedness
Our water table in a lot of Japan is way too high to make that practical without a lot of clever engineering to make it at all sustainable long-term. (I saw a reference to tokyo-2 elsewhere in the thread so I may be being wooshed by anime/manga references). And as I type this we get an earthquake, heh
Just idle curiosity but are basements and underground structures more common in areas high up in the mountains or way up in the north like Hokkaido?
In the American South we don’t usually have basements and they say it’s because you don’t need to dig down far to get past the frostline (whereas in our north they apparently have to dig down a fair distance to get to where the pipes wouldn’t freeze from below and once they’ve excavated that much you might as well get a basement anyway) and we also generally have high water tables that make basements dicey except in certain areas. My grandparents lived at the top of a hill on a plateau or ridge and unlike many people in the south they had a basement mostly cut into the slope of the hill (though it had a door leading out where the slope dropped down so maybe it doesn’t fully count), but even with the somewhat further down water tables there they constantly were running a dehumidifier in the basement due to the moisture and on occasion in heavy storms the walls would seep in water.
I’ve never known anyone who has a basement in Japan. Commercial buildings frequently have them, but they require a lot of maintenance, ventilation, sealing, pumping, etc.
Burying pipes below the frost line is definitely a thing, though.
I actually looked at properties butting against a hill/mountain to dig a root cellar, but it ultimately ended up being more trouble than it was worth.
Uuuuh what’s the use of having multiple capitals ??
i haven’t checked this particular article but I think I’ve seen earthquake risk mitigation mentioned.
Like in case building in capital A go poof you can use building in capital B ?
On an island country. This is what a MAGA PM gets you.
