Compare Tokyo and Hokkaido
Compare Hokkaido and Tokyo in Finance and Education
Kohei Kubo
These days we do not hear about it, we often heard the word, ‘Local Activation (Chihou Sousei)’ a little before. I would like to focus on this. You might not notice if you have lived in only big city, however many problems have suffered regions, such as the lack of hospitals, financial collapse, and decrease of population. There are so many tasks, and Local government and people are trying to get over that. However, do only regions have been suffering? No, metropolises also have many challenges. I felt the problem of big city when I came to Tokyo from Hokkaido. For instance, the expanding of economic disparity actualized of waiting children, and increase of population. We cannot dismiss these problems. Then, I would like to see both problems of big cities and regions, comparing big city, Tokyo and region, my country, Hokkaido. This time, I set three pillars for this comparison. The state of finance and economic, problems of education, and population. Let’ see from the first point, the state of finance and economics.
Big cities are economically good condition and regions are not so good. However, what is real? To what extent are they so good or bad? These are some date.
Closing situation- Real Balance (unit: thousand)
Hokkaido: \2,846,658
Tokyo: \148,088,362
The exponent of finance (unit: point)
Hokkaido: 0.38241
Tokyo: 0.86449
Numbers of closing situation show how much money do the local government get and spend. Both prefectures are balance in black, however, there are huge gap. Number of Tokyo is biggest in Japan and number of Hokkaido is sixteenth from the bottom, Tokyo is 60 times as much as Hokkaido is. Moreover, Tokyo is about 291 times as much as Nagasaki (it is the lowest prefecture). It means that there are big gaps between big cities and regions in Japan. In addition, the number of the exponent of finance shows how the local government’s finance is. If the number is under 0.4, the local government is regarded as depopulation organization. In Japan, there are 25 prefectures regarded as depopulation organization, and Hokkaido is twenty-ninth.
As we see, big cities are economically and financially good condition, however, regions are not so good or bad.
The second point is problems of education. Big cities such as Tokyo have so many schools, so students have many choices to take. However, regions have not so many schools because of depopulation, and then students have less choice to take.
This is good example to show that.
Numbers of elementary school
Hokkaido: 1,154
Tokyo: 1,358
Numbers of elementary school children (unit: one thousand)
Hokkaido: 261
Tokyo: 586
作品名：Compare Tokyo and Hokkaido 作家名：kohei