Tokyo

is a city guided by the doughnut phenomenon: the daytime population of the inner wards of the city is six times higher than the population at night.

Waley has noted that since 1950, the population of the place has doubled, as has what planners call the doughnut phenomenon: the daytime population of the inner wards of the city (Chiyoda, Chuo, Minato) is six times higher than the population at night.

is a city with a receptacle nature. Its pencil buildings, eight-to-ten story are wobbly, windy structures that afford room only for hole-in-the-wall offices and apartments.

No-one here can hope any longer to own their own home, and flats are expensive and small. Paul Waley, writing of the ‘receptacle nature’ of Tokyo, speaks of the ‘pencil buildings, eight-to-ten story, wobbly, windy structures that afford room only for hole-in-the-wall offices and apartments’.

Paul WaleyThinkers

Paul Waley