Tokyo bay as a productive landscape

In the large body of research on the relationship between cities and their hinterlands, the role of bodies of water as productive resources has often been overlooked. Tokyo presents the case of a city whose bay has played an indispensable role in the growth of the city, in perceptions of the cityscape and, most importantly, in provisioning the urban population. This essay examines the management of bay fisheries from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries to show how the character of the political regime governing the city shaped the way that fishing communities and the urban consumer population exploited and enjoyed the urban aquascape.