The city of Tokyo has been so frequently described that there is no need to dilate upon it here; but it may be well to correct a general misapprehension regarding its extent. It is usually stated that Tokyo is in area about half that of London, but as a matter of fact the Japanese capital is only about a quarter in extent and a third in population of the English. Its actual area is 18,273.7 acres, or 28½ square miles, of which building land occupies 9,822.5 acres; roads, embankments, rivers, and ditches take up 2,690 acres; rice-paddies and fields, 2,062 acres; Government lands, 1,604.8 acres; Imperial estates, 955.3 acres, the Imperial castle standing upon 520.6 acres of land; cemeteries, 521.1 acres; shrines and temples, 250.4 acres; waste land, 252.8 acres; and river-banks, ponds, and marshes, 243.4 acres. There are eighteen public parks and gardens in Tokyo and its suburbs with a total area of 441.5 acres, of which the two largest are Uyeno in the north, 138 acres, and in the south Shiba, 120 acres. At the end of 1893, there were 1,386 streets with an aggregate length of 547 miles and area of 1,596 acres. In the same year the population was 1,275,615, consisting of 690,475 males and 585,140 females, living in 234,248 buildings, which covered 2,702 acres, thus giving 10.2 square yards per inhabitant. The average rate of mortality from 1890 to 1893 was 27 per thousand; and the density of population varied from 195 per acre in the mercantile district of Nihonbashi to 34 per acre in Kojimachi District, in which the Imperial castle and most Government offices are situated, the ratio for the whole city being 75 per acre, or 64½ square yards per inhabitant.
Tokyo,
November, 1895.
N.B.—No distinction is made in the number of the Japanese words used in this book as the same form serves in Japan for both the singular and the plural.
The Japanese style of giving the surname before the individual name (which corresponds to the Christian name) is also followed in the text.
