Economy of Tokyo

Tokyo has an enormous economy, with about 800,000 businesses of all kinds and 8 million workers.

Service industries, including wholesale and retail trade, finance, and insurance, made up the largest sector of the economy; services accounted for 72 percent of Tokyo’s labor force in 1990.

Secondary industries ranked second, with 27.5 percent of the labor force.

Manufacturing dominates the secondary industries category and comprises about 20 percent of Tokyo’s total labor force.

Jobs in transportation account for most of the other secondary employment.

Primary industries, such as fishing and agriculture, made up 0.5 percent of the economy.

The long-term trend is a decline in manufacturing (which employed almost one-third of the labor force in 1970) and greater emphasis on services.

Tokyo is especially important as the headquarters for most private companies in Japan, as well as the nation’s center for finance, government, communications, and education. It also has the highest concentration of foreign companies doing business in Japan.

The focus of Tokyo’s service economy is its downtown central business district.

This district is fairly large, with many office buildings and businesses located near the grounds of the Imperial Palace. It covers much of the city’s three central wards, Chūō, Chiyoda, and Minato.

Many of Japan’s largest manufacturing corporations, financial institutions, and other companies are headquartered here, as are the Japanese offices of many foreign companies.

The Marunouchi district in Chūō Ward is especially notable as a concentration of company offices, while the famous Ginza area, also in Chūō Ward, is known for its department stores, specialty shops, art galleries, and many fine restaurants.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange is in a district of Chūō Ward called Kabutocho.

There are other important commercial centers outside the central business district at key interchanges of commuter rail lines.

The largest of these so-called subcenters is Shinjuku, located on the west side of the heart of the city in Shinjuku Ward.

Most of Tokyo’s tallest buildings are located here in a planned district of office and hotel towers called New Shinjuku City Center.

The offices of Tokyo Metropolitan Government (the equivalent of City Hall) moved to this district from Chūō Ward in 1991.

Other important subcenters include Shibuya, Ikebukuro, and Ueno.

The city’s largest manufacturing establishments are concentrated along the shores of Tokyo Bay.

Here, extending from Tokyo to Yokohama, is the Keihin Industrial Region, the largest industrial complex in Japan.

This district produces nearly one-fifth of the nation’s total manufactured goods by value.

It depends heavily on imported raw materials, and includes sprawling steel mills and shipyards, oil refineries, petrochemical manufacturers, and various assembly plants.

There are many different products, including steel, chemicals, machinery, lumber, textiles, cameras and optical goods, electronic equipment, food products, and a wide variety of other consumer goods.

There is also considerable manufacturing near the heart of Tokyo, particularly in older sections of the city close to the Sumida River.

Manufacturing plants in the urban center are mostly small.

In 1985 about 46 percent of the more than 93,000 manufacturing plants in Tokyo Metropolis employed only one to three people, while an additional 36 percent of factories had only four to nine workers.

The largest category of manufacturing in Tokyo is printing and publishing, accounting for about 20 percent of all factories in the metropolis and nearly 22 percent of the manufacturing labor force.

The port of Tokyo has expanded tremendously in recent years and is now the second largest in Japan (after Yokohama) in value of trade.

In 1993 it accounted for approximately 14 percent of all trade by Japan’s ports.

Reasons for the port’s growth include the deepening of sea lanes in Tokyo Bay, large reclamation projects to create room for new facilities and container terminals, and improvements to storage and distribution facilities.

The largest categories of exports from the port of Tokyo are machinery, automotive parts, and chemical products.

Imports include lumber, machinery, fruits and vegetables, processed foods and beverages, and marine products.

Much of Tokyo’s trade also goes through the port of Yokohama. That city has a better natural harbor and was developed after 1858 for the specific purpose of serving Tokyo with foreign trade.

The first rail line in Tokyo (and in Japan) was constructed in 1872 to connect the city with the port of Yokohama.

Since then freight and passenger rail networks have grown enormously, and Tokyo has emerged as the national hub for both.

A high-speed passenger rail system known as the shinkansen was inaugurated in 1964. It is often referred to as the “bullet train” because of the speed and the shape of the locomotive.

The first line connected Tokyo with Ōsaka. The line now extends southwest to Hakata on the island of Kyūshū, and is known as the Tōkaidō-San’yō Shinkansen.

In 1982 the Tohoku Shinkansen and Jōetsu Shinkansen were opened to Morioka in northern Japan and Niigata on the Sea of Japan (East Sea) coast, respectively.

Rail and subway lines are extremely important in Tokyo commuting patterns.

Some lines are privately owned, such as Keio and Odakyu, while some are operated by branches of Japan Railways and the Tokyo government.

In the 23 wards alone, about 27 million passengers use mass transit each day.

Tokyo Station, in Chūō Ward, is the city’s central station for commuters and intercity shinkansen traffic.

It handles some 2500 trains each day and more than 700,000 passengers.

Many other train and subway stations, in addition to bus routes and taxis, serve the downtown as well.

Tokyo’s busiest station is Shinjuku Station at a key rail interchange on the west side of the city. It handles more than 3 million passengers each day.

Trains are notoriously crowded, especially during morning rush hours, and are often filled to more than double their capacity.

White-gloved “pushers” are employed to patrol the platforms and shove riders inside jam-packed trains before doors close.

The Yamanote Line is Tokyo’s most crowded. It forms a loop around the inner part of the city and connects 29 stations, including both Tokyo Station and Shinjuku Station, along its 34.5-km (22-mi), 60-minute run.

Much of the street pattern of Tokyo dates to historic times and is made of narrow, crooked lanes that are unsuitable for heavy use by automobiles.

The radiating highways and expressways that were put in to modernize the road network are usually badly overcrowded, and traffic moves at a slow pace.

Parking is a major problem. A person must provide proof of an off-street, overnight parking space to own a car in Tokyo.

Tokyo’s major airport is the New Tokyo International Airport, also called Narita Airport.

It is located about 65 km (about 40 mi) east of Tokyo in the city of Narita, Chiba Prefecture.

It opened in May 1978 as a replacement for the overcrowded Tokyo International Airport (Haneda Airport). Narita Airport is reached by two railways, the Narita Line and the Keisei Line, as well as limousine bus service.

More than 20 million passengers use this airport each year.

Narita is also important as an air freight port, particularly for imports of fresh foods, magazines, and newspapers.

Haneda Airport, located along Tokyo Bay south of downtown Tokyo, is the city’s primary airport for domestic travel.

Tokyo Metropolis is the media and communications center of Japan.

By the late 1980s the city included many of Japan’s media and communications businesses, despite having only about 10 percent of the country’s population.

In the early 1990s some 2,400 monthly and weekly periodicals were being published in Tokyo.

Moreover, there are eight general newspapers published in the city, as well as three economic and industrial newspapers and seven sports newspapers.

The newspapers with the largest circulations are Yomiuri Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, and Asahi Shimbun.

Tokyo is also the origin of most television and radio programming in Japan.

In 1990 Tokyo had more telephone lines than any other city in the world.