Chess in China 1998. Karpov's second visit took him to Beijing, Shenyang, Shanghai and Guangzhou – four of the five largest cities in China. He also took the opportunity to launch the Chinese edition of his book "Disney's Guide to Chess" and appeared to autograph his books at major bookstores in each city he visited. There were 20,000 copies for the first printing and more than half were sold within one week of his visit. Karpov played a total of five exhibitions and once again, the immense publicity raised the interest of chess to another level. At present, in terms of media publicity,
Largest cities in Japan by population by decade World War in defeat, under temporary American administration. Many cities had been attacked by American bomber forces, and many of the largest cities suffered further loss as residents evacuated to more rural regions of the country. Cities, though, were already recovering quickly from their wartime lows. Source data is from the 1950 Census. A series of municipal mergers throughout the 1950s known as the "Great Showa Mergers" cut the number of municipalities in Japan by almost two thirds, significantly increasing the size of many cities in the process. By this time, almost all of Japan's largest cities had recovered war