Destruction from Above: Contemporary Socioeconomic Legacies of the Tokyo Air Raids

This is an-in person event at the Munk School, 1 Devonshire Place, Seminar Room 208, North House, Toronto, Ontario.

What are the long-term socioeconomic consequences of wartime destruction? In this research project, Daniel M. Smith and colleagues used historical aerial photographs taken after the firebombing of Tokyo in World War II to measure micro-variation in neighborhood-level damages, and then investigate the relationship between the amount of damages sustained and the present-day strength of neighborhood associations, a key indicator of geographically-rooted social capital. Even after decades of population recovery, economic growth, and transformations of the urban space, the most heavily damaged neighborhoods continue to have less-organized neighborhood associations, and also exhibit lower socioeconomic well-being in terms of education, occupation, and residential stability. These findings are consistent with the idea that the social capital of survivors is a crucial ingredient for postwar recovery: when fewer survivors remain, communities can potentially be set on a path of persistent disadvantage.  

Speaker Bio:

Daniel M. Smith is the Gerald L. Curtis Visiting Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy in the Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.  His interests cover a range of topics in Japanese politics, comparative politics, political economy, and political behavior. A core substantive focus of his research and teaching is political representation in democracies, especially how institutions such as electoral systems affect voting behavior and the demographic backgrounds and behavior of political elites.  He is the author of Dynasties and Democracy (Stanford University Press, 2018) and articles appearing in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and Political Analysis. He is also a co-editor of the Japan Decides election series.  Prior to coming to Columbia University, he was assistant and then associate professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University. He received his MA (2009) and PhD (2012) in political science from the University of California, San Diego, and his BA (2005) in political science and Italian from the University of California, Los Angeles. From 2012 to 2013, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University.