The bright lights of the city are drawing a record number of people in search of careers and excitement. But city life comes at a price. Recent studies have found that Japan's city dwellers are jeopardizing their lives and their offspring.
While Japanese people have been living longer and longer to keep the lead in the world's longevity race as a country, the growth in life expectancy has apparently hit the ceiling in big cities. Tanji Hoshi, professor of public health at Tokyo Metropolitan University, has found that Tokyo residents, who outlived people in other regions until the early 1980s, now have a much shorter lifespan than those of other prefectures.
For example, the life expectancy of Tokyo residents increased 7.07 years from 69.84 to 76.91 for men between 1965 and 1995. But during this period, men in Nagano Prefecture gained 9.86 from 68.45 to 78.08. As a result, Nagano men became the longest-lived Japanese males in 1995 while the ranking of Tokyo men dropped to 20th.