Is "Tokyo Is The Centre Of The Universe" specifically about Japan?

(Courtesy link.)

The subject was brought up in this discussion in YKTTW; I was under the impression from the name that the trope "Tokyo is the centre of the universe" was about, well, Tokyo. And even the description seems pretty Japan-centric.

Um, yes. We have a few other tropes for this happening in other cities (such as Big Applesauce). This is a subtrope missing a supertrope. The proposed YKTTW would be a subtrope of...I don't know what you'd call it...The Writers Country Is The Center Of The Universe, and Big Applesauce would be a subtrope of that.

^Write Where You Know?

Or possibly Creator Provincialism. Either way, Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe is indeed specifically about, well, Tokyo.

I'm pretty sure it's Creator Provincialism as the supertrope.

Yep, Tokyo Is The Centre Of The Universe is quite specifically how the majority of Japanese media (at least those set in the modern day or 20 Minutes in the Future) are set in Tokyo, at least partly because its at the centre of the largest concentration of Japan's population.

And yeah, Creator Provincialism is the super trope. Actually I could have sworn that it was listed in the trope description at one point.

Creator Provincialism is one of the supertropes, but that's only half the trope.

Actually I think the missing supertrope would be:

Everything Happens In The Big City

Since that's the other core of the Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe trope. It's about how we almost never seen sitcoms based in Blackwell, Oklahoma or Spokane, Washington.

Instead the shows are all based in New York, LA, Seattle, etc.

I assume that similarly for France everything happens in Paris. And for England everything happens in London.

edited 24th Nov '11 10:28:38 AM by Sackett

I think it would make sense, at the very least, to launch a trope for how everything takes place in the city. I was thinking of just how many stories could work just as well in a town or something even smaller, yet end up in a big city even if there's no need. High Fidelity, for instance - there's no reason that it had to take place in London (the novel) or Chicago (the movie). It could have taken place somewhere much smaller. But it didn't.

The last paragraph disagrees with what you (this group) has said:

"This is also seen in many American media, particularly involving Los Angeles. Entire books have been written on why fiction writers make Los Angeles a magnet for violence and natural disasters. Sometimes San Francisco. New York sometimes, especially in Marvel Comics (sometimes lampshaded that New Yorkers tend to be more used to superhero fighting than anyone else). These cities also share many similar traits with Tokyo. See Big Applesauce. Likewise, in British media London Is The Centre Of The Universe. Canadians who refer to Toronto as such, however, are being self-deprecatingly sarcastic (if they live in that area themselves) or just plain sarcastic (if they're from anywhere else in Canada)."

Should this be the jumping off point for a supertrope, and we'll make a subtrope for every big city in the world? (is very uncertain about that idea)

The name's definitely specific enough that it's probably deterring non-Tokyo examples(assuming that part wasn't just shoehorned in in lieu of making the supertrope).

I'd be almost certain that's what happened. "Supertrope aversion" is among the most common sources of problems with trope descriptions.

Well, the oldest version of the page the Internet Archive has doesn't have the problematic paragraph, so...

Then it sounds like this was supertrope aversion. So we should have a couple levels of Creator Provincialism, right? "Occurs in creator's small town", "occurs in their favorite big city", "occurs in their favorite country"? With a nod that "occurs in their favorite world" would be a trope, if humans had colonized other planets?

Bump

I would suggest that "Occurs in the big city" is also a form of Creator Provincialism.

Everything Happens In The Big City sounds like a good thing to have. The other proposed layers don't seem common enough to be split from Creator Provincialism.