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LordAmeth moved page Jokamachi to Castletowns: common English term.
[[Image:Nagoya-castle-model.jpg|right|thumb|400px|A model of [[Nagoya castle]] and the surrounding ''jôkamachi''.]]
*''Japanese'': 城下町 ''(joukamachi)''
*''Japanese'': 城下町 ''(joukamachi)''
''Jôkamachi'' (lit. "towns below castles") were cities which grew up around [[castles]], especially those which served as a daimyô's "seat," the political center of a ''[[han]]'' (domain) in the [[Edo period]].
''Jôkamachi'' (lit. "towns below castles") were cities which grew up around [[castles]], especially those which served as a daimyô's "seat," the political center of a ''[[han]]'' (domain) in the [[Edo period]].
Castle towns in the 17th century numbered over two hundred.<ref>Moriya, Katsuhisa. Ronald Toby (trans.) "Urban Networks and Information Networks." in Chie Nakane and Shinzaburô Ôishi (eds.) ''Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan''. University of Tokyo Press, 1990. p104.</ref>
Prior to the 1570s, castles were primarily defensive structures, rather than being the permanent political centers and ''daimyô'' residences they would later become. In 1570, the Imperial capital of [[Kyoto]] and the bustling ports of [[Nagasaki]] and [[Sakai]] were among the only cities of any appreciable size in Japan. This changed dramatically, and rapidly, over the course of the [[Azuchi-Momoyama period]] (c. 1573-1598) and the early decades of the 17th century. ''Daimyô'' seats became more permanent, and as ''daimyô'' encouraged merchants into their domains (and, especially, into their castle towns) in order to claim for themselves the economic and cultural benefits of such merchant activity within their borders, many castle towns grew into cities of considerable size, population, and economic power.
Castle towns in the 17th century numbered over two hundred,<ref>Moriya, Katsuhisa. Ronald Toby (trans.) "Urban Networks and Information Networks." in Chie Nakane and Shinzaburô Ôishi (eds.) ''Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan''. University of Tokyo Press, 1990. p104.</ref> and by 1700 Japan was home to some of the largest cities in the world. Roughly ten percent of the total population of the archipelago was already living in cities as early as the 1640s. By 1700, [[Edo]] is believed to have had a population of roughly one million; [[Osaka]] and [[Kyoto]] were home to roughly 300,000, and the ''daimyô'' seats of [[Nagoya]] and [[Kanazawa]] boasted around 100,000 people each.
Despite a considerable degree of ''daimyô'' autonomy within their respective domains, and cultural differences from one end of the archipelago to another, the vast majority of castle towns resembled one another quite closely in a number of respects: most had districts of samurai residences closely clustered around the castle, and [[chonin|townsperson (commoner)]] neighborhoods officially divided up by occupation; most also matched one another quite closely in the width of their roads, residential architectural styles, and certain other aspects of urban layout overall. Castles themselves were often surrounded by moats and walls, but the city as a whole not, unlike in China and many parts of Europe where a city wall defined the bounds of the urban space. In Japan, by contrast, cities or towns bled into farmland, with no city walls.<ref>Chie Nakane, "Tokugawa Society," in Nakane & Ôishi, 214.</ref>
==References==
==References==