Japan, Edo.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Edo was undoubtedly the most developed modern city in all of Asia in terms of industry, technology, and overall strength. Edo proper alone had a population exceeding two million; including its suburbs, it could reach more than three million.
In population, Edo ranked only slightly below Shanghai of the Far East Empire. In all other respects, Japan held the overall advantage. If foreign capital's influence were excluded, Edo would crush any city in Asia.
After all, Japan was the only industrialized nation and great power in all of Asia.
However, there was another important reason why Edo's population was lower than that of the Far East Empire's largest city: the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.
That great earthquake directly caused the deaths of more than a hundred thousand people in Edo and its surrounding areas, while over a million homes collapsed or were damaged. Of course, Japanese houses were mostly wooden, so even when damaged, the impact was not too great. Even so, it caused large numbers of people to flee cities such as Edo.
If not for that earthquake, Edo might have developed even faster. The disaster had even affected the development of the entire Japanese economy.
Even now, Edo had not recovered. Many areas had yet to be rebuilt. Without the Great Kanto Earthquake's impact, Edo would long since have been Asia's undisputed largest city.
In 1927, Japan's total population exceeded sixty million, nearly equal to Germany's. However, without counting their colonies, Germany's territory was considerably larger than Japan's, and Germany's arable land and resources far surpassed those of the Japanese homeland.
Therefore, although Japan had joined the ranks of the world's great powers, there remained a vast gap between its overall economic level and industrial strength and those