Saitama
A manufactured city merging three rivals, where 175,000 workers commute to Tokyo daily and residents deny living there — Japan's largest remora.
Saitama does not technically exist. The city was manufactured in 2001 by merging three rival municipalities — Urawa, Omiya, and Yono — after a decade of negotiation. The merger was an administrative fiction designed to create a prefectural capital large enough to achieve 'designated city' status, which unlocks greater autonomy and funding from the national government. The three cities had distinct identities (Urawa was administrative, Omiya was commercial), and residents still identify with the old names.
Every weekday morning, roughly 175,000 of Saitama's 747,000 workers board trains to Tokyo — a 20-minute commute that defines the city's economic identity. The day-night population ratio is 92.8, meaning the city literally empties during business hours. This is not a metaphor. Saitama produces workers for Tokyo's economy the way a reef produces larvae for the open ocean.
Saitama's day-night population ratio is 92.8 — the city haemorrhages people every morning and refills every evening, a tidal pattern driven entirely by Tokyo's gravitational pull.
The cultural stigma reinforces the dependency. Comedian Tamori coined 'Dasaitama' in 1981 — a portmanteau of 'dasai' (uncool) and 'Saitama' — and the label stuck so effectively that many Saitama residents tell colleagues they live in Tokyo. Japan's ninth-largest city operates under a form of cultural erasure where its own residents deny belonging to it.
The one exception is the Saitama Super Arena, Japan's largest multipurpose venue and one of the country's only profitable arenas. It hosted Olympic basketball and routinely draws 37,000 people to events that, for one evening, reverse the commuter flow. The arena functions as costly signalling — an expensive, conspicuous investment designed to prove that Saitama is a destination, not just a dormitory.
Saitama is a remora — an organism that attaches to a larger host, travelling wherever it goes, feeding on scraps from the host's meals. The remora provides minor cleaning services; the host barely notices if it detaches. Tokyo would not register Saitama's absence. Saitama would not survive Tokyo's.