Why These Remote Islands are Technically Part of Tokyo

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Love seeing this as I recently moved to Japan

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/StrokeJuicyJuice 📅︎︎ Nov 27 2021 đź—«︎ replies
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Hello and welcome to the newest episode of YouTube’s favorite game show: How! Many! Words! Will! Sam! Mispronounce!! Today: one narrator, 33 Japanese words, and thousands of commenters just waiting to pounce. Let’s get started. So, this is Japan. And this is Tokyo. And this is also Tokyo, which is kind of odd because this and this are about this far apart. This is kind of odd, of course, because as you may know from living in a place, places are typically in one general place, and not several very far apart places. So, what’s going on here? Well, in order to understand why Tokyo includes islands 700 miles or 1,200 kilometers away, you first have to understand the Japanese prefecture system. Not to go all History of Japan on you, but back a long time ago, Japan was divided into a ton of what were called hans, essentially fiefdoms that were the property of feudal samurai lords called daimyo. But then in 1871 the Meiji government was all like “hey, you know how everything is run by super-cool warlord samurais? Well, what if instead it was run by lame weak nerds?” So, they switched over to what we call the prefecture system, splitting Japan into 47 regions that serve as the first level of administrative division. Now, one interesting thing about the prefecture system is that Japanese people don’t call it the prefecture system. And I know what you’re thinking: “Well yeah, obviously they don’t call it the prefecture system; they don’t call the country Japan, either. They speak another language, idiot.” But while I may be an idiot, that’s actually not the point I’m making; Japan doesn’t call them prefectures because they don’t exactly have a word for prefectures. Instead, they have four words for them. Of the 47 prefectures, 43 are ken, “prefectures proper,” two are fu, “urban prefectures,” one is do, a “circuit prefecture,” and one is to, a “metropolis,” which is Tokyo. This system is sometimes collectively referred to as the todofuken system, because, you know, to, do, fu, and ken. It’s some top-grade lazy naming; it would be like if Americans called the federal government SupremeCourtCongressJoeBiden or named a band Crosby Stills Nash and Young. Prefectures are further split up into municipalities, which also come in four forms: cho, which means towns; mura, villages; shi, cities; and ku, the special wards of Tokyo, which formerly made up Tokyo City. Prefectures and municipalities have extremely similar governing structures: prefectures have a governor, municipalities have a mayor, and both have councils, all of whom are directly elected to a four year term. There’s not a real formal delineation of powers between the prefectures and municipalities––they kind of share most responsibilities––but together, they run essentially all elements of domestic life in Japan apart from diplomacy, national security, and trials: schools, police forces, roads, weird little mascots, et cetera. In fact, local government accounts for 70% of government spending in Japan, while the remaining 30% goes to defending the island from its legendary, monstrous enemy: white guys who are way too into anime. So now let’s do what Half as Interesting does best and talk about some tiny islands. These are the Bonin, or Ogasawara Islands. They consist of all these islands, but the only inhabited ones are these ones: Chichijima and Hahajima. They were first visited by Europeans in 1543, then visited by the Japanese in 1670, then claimed by the Brits in 1827, then claimed by the Japanese in 1862, but then the Japanese gave up on that a year later, but then twelve years later they gave up on giving up and claimed them again, and put settlers on them and told all the European and American settlers who were already there that they were Japanese now, creating the world’s first weeaboos. And these are the Izu Islands, commonly called the Seven Islands of Izu, because of course, there are seventeen islands and nine of them are inhabited. The Izu are basically Australia but smaller: the Japanese used them as convict settlements until about the middle of the Edo period, and now they’re a popular tourist destination thanks to their scenic beauty, ecological diversity, and propensity to try and murder you. So basically, here’s the deal: Japan has all these islands, and they’ve got to administer them somehow, but they don’t want to make them their own prefecture, because only a handful of people live there. So they became part of Tokyo’s prefecture, Tokyo Metropolis, because, well, Tokyo has a lot of money, it’s the capital, it’s on the water, and it has a major port for travel between the mainland and the islands. In fact, the only way to visit the Ogasawara islands is a weekly 24-hour ferry ride from Tokyo. Ultimately, the key to understanding why Tokyo includes these far-off islands is despite the fact that most foreigners think of Tokyo as a city, the same way we’d think of London or Chicago or Flavortown, it’s not a city––it’s a prefecture. Because the islands are so far away, Tokyo has actually categorized them into four subprefectures, a relatively unusual form of sub-government in Japan that includes regional offices to help add more structure on top of municipalities. The Izu islands are divided into the Oshima subprefecture, the Miyake subprefecture, and the Hacijo subprefecture, and the Ogasawara Islands are all one subprefecture: the Ogasawara Islands, and a handful of further-out islands that historically weren’t considered part of the Ogasawara islands, the Volcano Islands, Nishinoshima, Minamitorishima, and Okinotorishima, which are maybe islands or maybe a cold-hearted ploy at expanding Japan’s EEZ. It’s actually a fascinating story––if only someone had made an easily digestible, well-researched, humor-filled video on that topic… oh wait someone did. This system can lead to some weird consequences, though. For example, Tokyo’s population density is technically listed as 6,363 people per square kilometer, but that number is bigly skewed by the islands, which have a lot of area and a not lot of people: if you just considered mainland Tokyo, its population density would be about 7,780 per square kilometer. Another challenge is that the governor of Tokyo prefecture has to be voted on by everyone in Tokyo, which means that the mayor of all this can’t be officially declared until ballots come in from here. Yet another difficulty is that our data suggests that less than half of the residents of the Tokyo Islands are subscribed to Nebula. Look, by now you’ve probably heard the spiel before––Nebula is home to an incredible amount of Original and ad-free content from all your favorite educational creators: me, Real Life Lore, Thomas Frank, me, Legal Eagle, me, Second Thought, me and even, me. But you probably haven’t heard me say before that right now you can get the Nebula-CuriosityStream bundle for 42% off, because that sale is an absolutely bonkers deal and it’s only happening for a limited time through the 28th of November. If you’ve already watched the HAI Bricks Special and our three-part trivia show, you might want to check out the Real Life Lore Nebula Original Series, Modern Conflicts: full-length videos in the same form as regular Real Life Lore content that covers more controversial topics, like Israel and Gaza, or the Armenia-Azerbaijan War. With the bundle, you’ll also get access to CuriosityStream, the incredible nonfiction streaming service with top-shelf content like Asia’s Monarchies, which has an entire 52-minute episode on Japan’s fascinating monarchical history. So, get that bundle for the totally nuts price of $11.59 a year––less than a dollar a month––at CuriosityStream.com/HAI, and when you do, you’ll be helping support independent creators like HAI.
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Channel: Half as Interesting
Views: 538,525
Rating: undefined out of 5
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Id: LX1YlHOED30
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Length: 7min 0sec (420 seconds)
Published: Fri Nov 26 2021
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