Neo-Tokyo

Not as badly damaged as Yokohama, Tokyo was still seriously damaged in the Ring of Fire eruptions of ’61 and ’62, and was the focus of a decade-long rebuilding effort under the reign of Emperor Yasuhito, who commanded the rebuilding be directed by the Shinto priest- hood rather than under full corporate control. The first act of this rebuilding was to merge Tokyo with the prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama, creating the Neo-Tokyo sprawl. It has been said that this approach was as much about rebuilding the spirit of the nation as it was the physical rebuilding, and in the end, both seem to have been quite successful. The average height of buildings tripled to almost fifty meters, the sky was filled with AR feeds, the streets were cleaned, and the populace felt empowered. Since the city is the capital of the nation, its focus on greenspace, harmonizing nature with industry, and a resurgence of shrines has inspired many other cities in Japan to take a similar approach. That has cascaded down into the corporations as well, with a new environmental awareness blunting some of the more rapacious techniques of old. Not all corporations agree, however, with Mitsuhama serving as the primary opposition to the emperor’s ongoing agenda even as other, smaller foes have slowly been won over to Yasuhito’s side. Neo-Tokyo is home to just over fifty million people and is the cultural, spiritual, and economic heart of the Japanese Imperial State. Every Japanese megacorporation has offices there, with most having their corporate HQ within the city’s borders, and most other megacorporations keep offices here as well since the lifting of certain restrictions by the emperor that denied foreign corporations the ability to do business in Japan. The integration of natural aspects with the city, with solar energy, geothermal taps, and vertical farms, has been core to the Shinto tenets, while the omnipresent AR feeds, subtle bioware use over crude cybernetics, and commonplace drones remind some fourteen million visitors a year that Japan remains the leading technological nation on Earth.