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podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 261, The City That Never Sleeps, Part 4.

Perhaps no moment of urban rebirth in human history is as dramatic as what happened in Tokyo after the Second World War.

By pretty much any measure, the revival of the city was incredibly fast. For example,

in 1940, Tokyo had a population of over 7 million. By 1945, that population had more or less

fallen in half, to under 3.5 million. After all, a ruined city with no food was, obviously enough, far less attractive

to economic migrants than a bustling wartime capital, not to mention all the residents

killed by the war or by the food shortages created by the American blockade, and those who

had fled for the countryside, with its far fewer bombs and far more food.

However, by 1950, even before the city's recovery was really complete, the population had bounced

...