Street naming in pre-WWII Japan

Factual Questions
1

As a child, I read a lot of the trendy pop anthropology of the 70s. One factoid that has stuck with me all these years was the following:

*The Japanese named intersections and landmarks, but not streets in their cities, reflecting they way they modeled the urban landscape in their minds. As a result they tended to vary their routes from Point A to Point B more than Westerners.

After WWII, the occupying Allied forces had great trouble with this paradigm, and forced the naming of certain key thoroughfares [Avenues A, B and C in Tokyo]. Today, Japan uses the Western convention voluntarily but [as of 1970] Japanese still often give “street directions” in the old paradigm.*

Today, this came up in conversation, and I realized how many factoids I learned from Desmond Morris et alia turned out to be quite wrong. I later studied the Japanese language (and several others) in school, and never heard anything about this practice. Neurological studies I’d read about hemispheric localization in the brains of Japanese speakers were never replicated. Google turns up nothing.

I know that, as late as 1975, Japanese taxicab drivers had a reputation for not taking the same route twice (It was a running joke that after WWII, the kamekazi dropouts gravitated to driving cabs) but aside from that, I can’t find any support of the practice of only naming urban intersections.

Still, I find it a useful illustrative principle, and I’d hate to lose it. Can anyone out there point me in the right direction (or the right intersection, if you prefer)?

2

The only thing I found was this account of a trip to Japan:
Some relevant sections:

I seem to remember one of my professors explaining that this practice of not naming streets was intended to confuse army that happened to invade Japan. I don’t know how accurate that is, though.

Certainly not a definitive answer, but its a start until someone else comes along with better information.

3

As a rule, streets are still not named in Japan. Postal addresses use blocks instead, so they look something like:
Prefecture, city, ward, district, block, building number

The factoid about intersections and landmarks having names is true, but is not limited to urban areas. As a matter of fact, I’d say it’s more obvious in the country. You’ll find the names of these intersections on road maps and such.

Some roads do have names, though. Major national and prefectural roads have numbers, like in North America and highways all have names. Sometimes, some rural roads are given names to make them more attractive to tourists. Close to where I used to live, we had Sunny Road and Pearl Road.

In large cities, some important roads are named but most smaller ones don’t. In Osaka, for instance, there is Mido-suji and Sakai-suji. In cities that were capitals, like Kyoto or Nara, there are remnants of the old system - based on Chinese city planning - that used avenues. You thus get street names like ni-jo (second avenue) or go-jo (fifth avenue). Kyoto is probably the city that has the highest density of named streets.

The only major city that has some sort of systematic attempt at naming streets is Nagoya, in its downtown district of Sakae. However, this doesn’t extend to the rest of the metropolis. I too heard the story that this dates to the American occupation, but my sources aren’t so good.

Also, the person who has never heard streets refered to by their numbers hasn’t been talking to many locals. Route 21 goes through my town, and everyone refers to it as “route 21”. Same went for route 23, or route 1.

If you’re curious as to what road maps look like, here is my town. The big black characters are city names, while the smaller brown ones are intersection names mentioned above. If you zoom in, you’ll see that indeed, streets have no indications.

4

Just to add to what jovan so ably explained, in Tokyo it is mostly only major streets that have names. In fact, it is not uncommon to see even natives standing outside a bar or club trying to describe nearby landmarks to navigate their friends to them. Most establishments have meishi (cards) available to grab as you leave that have little maps on them. Usually, directions are given from train/subway stations. Most of the major stations have well-known meeting points in the vicinity, since it’s not very easy to give an address to meet at. For instance, when I call Sublight and we agree to meet in Shibuya, I know he’ll be standing by the Starbucks. :smiley:

5

Another interesting fact…the buildings aren’t numbered sequentially along a street, but rather in the order they are built, so #4 could be between #208 and #47! Luckily there are police officers on duty near the stations in larger cities and they have maps as wells as alot of experience helping lost foreigners like me.

6

I shudder to think of what life was like before faxes and portable phones, since directing someone to a meeting place almost always requires sending a map first.

In addition to major avenues, small market streets (which get far more foot traffic than road traffic) are often named, such as Shibuya’s Sentaa-gai and the Sakae-dori in my neighborhood. Comparably-sized conventional streets, however, are usually left anonymous.

Occasionally, a middle-sized street will have an official name for no apparent reason. The street my office is on is called Heisei-dori, even though it’s not much larger than most of the unnamed streets in the neighborhood.

And when you arrange to meet someone at a landmark, make sure it’s the only landmark of its kind. My first meeting with Cerowyn almost didn’t happen, since we agreed to meet “at the exit” of a station with 10 equally-sized exits spread out over a quarter-mile. (and Shibuya has at least six Starbucks, btw!)