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The story
On the evening of November 6, a symposium exploring the possibility of relocating Japan’s capital functions to Okayama was held in Okayama City, drawing around 100 attendees to a discussion among industry, academic, and government representatives. The event was organized by Wonder Ship, a group of local business leaders, and Okayama University President Nasu emphasized the city’s robust medical infrastructure and its capacity to handle population growth. Low disaster risk was cited as the main argument, but on the thread many questioned that premise, pointing to the flooding from the 2018 West Japan Heavy Rain disaster and the Kumamoto earthquakes — opinions were split.
If the capital were ever to move, why not Okayama? A symposium exploring that very possibility was held in Okayama City on the night of November 6.
The symposium was hosted by Wonder Ship, a group formed by Okayama business leaders, and about 100 people listened in on the discussion among industry, academic, and government figures.
There was consensus that Okayama, with its low risk of earthquakes and other disasters, is well-suited to serve as the capital. Okayama University President Nasu argued, “Our medical system is robust enough to handle population growth even if we became the capital.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The northern part of the prefecture gets plenty of rain, actually.
Lately Okayama City's seen a lot of sudden summer downpours ("guerrilla rain").
Okayama was once Japan's #1 commercial city, you know.
What's that about? Are you talking about the ancient Kibi Province or something?
Capital: Okayama
Secondary capitals: Hiroshima, Himeji, Takamatsu
Personally I think somewhere between Tatsuno-Himeji and Akashi would be better.
That's all former Ikeda-domain territory anyway.
Re: #26
Kurashiki was shogunate-controlled land (tenryo).
That area sits on an artificial river with low-lying ground and low levees.
It used to flow into the Ashida River in Fukuyama, but they rerouted it into a river known for flooding.
People snap up the land because it's cheap, but it's really not a place anyone should be living.
For instance, even in ancient times with no accurate maps or GPS, the Sendai area had the provincial capital and state temple of Mutsu Province placed there, and it's remained the hub of the Tohoku region ever since.
There's no doubt that onmyoji-type diviners who could read a location's fortune and feng shui were giving advice on this stuff way back then.
Mitsuishi was a strategic point on par with Aonogahara to the east, but back then the drawbacks were being far from the old capital and having lots of pirates around.
Those downsides don't matter at all these days, so a capital on the Seto Inland Sea doesn't sound bad.
If the capital were nearby, there's also a chance "Dead Country" Shikoku (a pun on Shikoku's name, 四国/死国, both read "shikoku") could actually develop.
Right next to Mabi, the town in Kurashiki, Okayama where Kibi no Makibi — founder of the onmyoji tradition — was born, sits Konko-cho, famous for the Konkokyo religion, where fortune-tellers have gathered since ancient times.
Abe no Seimei himself studied from texts Makibi brought back and used them for astronomical observation.
The "Seimei Telescope" — East Asia's largest optical-infrared reflecting telescope, with a 3.8m aperture, installed at Kyoto University's Okayama Observatory in Kamogata, Asakuchi City, Okayama — was named after Abe no Seimei, honoring the fact that Japan's top telescope sits in Okayama under Kyoto University.
The graves of both Abe no Seimei and Ashiya Doman are also in Konko, Okayama.
Bedrock and fault lines have nothing to do with each other.
That was an act-of-god disaster caused by heavy rain that fell upstream in Hiroshima.
Nope.
Okayama's basically a package deal with Kagawa.
But Hiroshima has no flat land — people are stuck living in the mountains.
Saijo/Higashi-Hiroshima, on the other hand, is growing — it's close to the airport.
Hiroshima's Bingo region was originally part of Okayama (Kibi), you know.
I was shocked he retired at the very first corner of lap one.
Though since I just watched it on TV, it cost me nothing.
I thought, "wait, didn't Senna die at Suzuka?" — turns out that's wrong.
That's exactly what happened to Kyushu after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake (3/11). Kumamoto…
Places like Kitami, inland on Hokkaido's Okhotsk side, have zero disasters.
Asahikawa has none either.
Though it does have plenty of "ya" (slang for yakuza).
Snowy regions are a bit much either way.
Unless you've got a "barrier" like Niigata City does.
If you don't think snow counts as a disaster, your sense of normal has gone numb.
Now that everyone knows the Sobu Line area in Chiba can't handle rain, fewer people will move to Tokyo to live there.
Though if we're saying that, what about Hokkaido then.
Actually, in terms of transport access, Okayama is pretty well off.
Then — bam — two Kumamoto earthquakes back to back.
At this point it's basically divine punishment.
Kyushu's right in the path of typhoons, so it was never really a candidate to begin with.
Go eat your kibi dango and sit down (Okayama's famous millet-dumpling specialty).
The requirements themselves are off to begin with.
Only big cities even qualify as secondary-capital candidates — but by that logic, are we saying Tokyo, the biggest city of all, wouldn't be affected if Mt. Fuji erupted?
Fun fact: Bizen-Fukuoka in Bizen City is actually where Fukuoka Prefecture got its name.
Next to Tsuyama City, Mimasaka City — birthplace of the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi — is said to be where the Yata no Kagami (sacred mirror) was unearthed.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Discussion of relocating Japan’s capital functions has resurfaced repeatedly since the 1990s, driven by concerns over Tokyo’s overconcentration of population and earthquake risk, but it has never actually happened. Okayama Prefecture is known as a “low-disaster prefecture” thanks to its long hours of sunshine and few active faults — yet in the 2018 West Japan Heavy Rain disaster, levees were overtopped in Mabi, Kurashiki, and a large number of people in the prefecture died. That’s exactly where the thread split: some praised Okayama based on its historical standing as a strategic location and its transport convenience, while others, drawing on that flood’s toll, questioned the very premise that it’s a “low-disaster” place. Worth keeping in mind as a key point of this piece: when choosing candidate sites for capital relocation, flood risk deserves just as much weight as earthquake risk.
*This article is composed of excerpts and summaries from the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “Capital to Be Relocated to Low-Disaster, Healthcare-Rich Okayama — Industry, Academic, and Government Figures Hold Symposium [Okayama].”
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