East AsiaCh 11 sect. 2

Agriculture

And

City Systems

JAPANESE SETTLEMENT & AGRICULTURAL PATTERNS

• Highly urbanized & mountainous so Japan’s ag. Lands must share the same limited space as its cities & suburbs resulting in extremely intensive farming practices (photo 466);

• Rice = major crop (self-sufficient); vegetables & fruit are also produced in large quantities;

• The 3 largest metropolitan areas (Tokyo, Osaka & Nagoya) sit near the ctrs. of the 3 largest plains.

• Overall – pop. density is very high – its one of the most crowded places in the world; urban density is extremely high & real estate is very pricey; food prices too.

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China’s settlement & agricultural patterns

• Southern & Central China: Pop. Is mostly concentrated in well watered lowland areas where crops grow year round. Crops include rice, winter barely, vegetables, even tropical & subtropical crops

North China Plain

• “Anthropogenic Landscapes” The North China Plain is one of the world’s most heavily transformed landscapes (by human activity). Densely populated; almost entire area is used for agriculture, housing, factories , roads, bridges, etc.

Settlement & Agriculture in Korea & Taiwan…

• Korea – pop. Of 70 million (22 million North; 48 million in South) in a very small land area. Pop Density in South Korea is about 1,150 per square mile; S.K. is much more arable than N.K.

• Taiwan – most densely populated nation in the region. Total pop = 22 million; pop density = 1500 per square mile. Because of its geography, most of the people live in the narrow lowland belt in the north & west where cities & farms share the available land.

Resource Dependence (q2)

• Japan: Self sufficient in rice, but import more food than almost any other nation in the world. Rising income has made their diet more diverse & increased the amount of imported food. Even the volume of fish caught off Japan’s coasts is not enough to support their demand for fish – which is the major source of protein in their diets.

• Taiwan: Like Japan (strong economy & little arable land) they import food & other resources.

Resource dependence…

• China – Self sufficient at one point, China now imports large amts. Of grain; converting to more modern ag. Techniques would solve this, but if the economy keeps growing importing food won’t be problematic.

• S. Korea – with a strong economy, S. K. is the world’s 5th leading importer of wheat & 2nd of corn.

• N. Korea – strictly self-sufficient & lacking arable land N.K. has endured widespread famine for many years. Undernutrition is also a problem.

Urban Primacy…definitions (q3)• URBAN PRIMACY – the concentration of

urban population in a single city (Taiwan & South Korea);

• MEGALOPOLIS – large urban region formed as multiple cities grow & merge with each other (its like a string of cities in a row).

• SUPERCONURBATION – a huge zone of coalesced metropolitan areas (Japan).

Primary Cities and Urban Primacy

• China’s Primary Cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin & Hong Kong.

• Beijing & Shanghai – historically important cities for trade & gov’t; Beijing is China’s capital & is home to the former Emperor’s palace, now the seat of Chinese government & Tienanmen Square (largest open square in the world);

• Tianjin – an important port city; • Hong Kong – returned to Chinese control in 1997.• All these cities have their own metropolitan

governments. Hong Kong is a “special administrative region” – done to protect the wealth & freedom of its economic system that developed under British rule.

URBAN PRIMATE CITIES

• Urban Primacy: a city that dominates the urban system of the nation in which it is located by dominating economically, politically & culturally.

• Examples – Seoul, South Korea; Taipei, Taiwan. Both cities contain a high % of the total population and are the political & cultural centers of those nations.

Japan’s Urban Structure…

• Major cities include Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka & Nagoya. The greater Tokyo metropolitan area is Japan’s major population center, followed by the Osaka-Kobe center. Most Japanese cities are densely populated, but none rival Tokyo.

• Japan’s cities lack historical significance because of the fire bombing during WWII & the earthquakes that led to rebuilding. Many city scapes have changed dramatically since the 1980’s when Japan experienced an economic boom.

Major urban centers in a seismic zone…

• Kobe EQ 1995

• Recent Earthquakes in Japan:• top ten Japanese earthquakes

• China’’s Earthquakes:• quake table

• *East Asia is one of the most seismically active regions in the world. Combined with the numbers of people living in their major urban areas, it is a recipe for disaster.

Section 3 – Unifying cultural characteristics of East Asia

• Philosophies & political ideology are the most important unifying cultural characteristics in the region…

• Their unique writing system has some common characteristics that become unique upon further examination..

• COMMON FEATURE – East Asian writing systems are not ALPHABETIC – rather they are IDEOGRAPHIC where symbols represent ideas rather than sounds.

East Asian Writing Systems

• Because the writing systems are ideographic, they require a large number of distinct symbols.

• CHINESE SYSTEM: Major disadvantage = it’s hard to learn b/c to be literate you have to memorize thousands of characters; Major advantage = 2 literate people don’t have to speak the same language to be able to communicate since the written symbols they use may be the same.

E. Asian writing systems cont’d.• KOREAN MODIFICATIONS: Adopted Chinese characters – but in

1400’s created their own alphabet to promote literacy & distinguish themselves from Chinese writing system (scholars still use

• Chinese characters.

• JAPANESE MODIFICATIONS: complex system – the borrowed Chinese characters are called KANJI; but major grammatical differences led to the development of HIRAGANA (for words not easily represented in Chinese); there is another parallel system called KATAKANA which is used only for spelling words of foreign origin; and ROMANJI is Japanese written with the Roman alphabet – which is commonly used in advertising & for computer use.