The part that stuck with me is the chō: 1,500+ walled blocks with gated alleys, the control built right into the streets. A commoner born there would never have known a city that wasn't a grid of gates, so to them it wouldn't feel like a cage at all, just normal.
Makes me wonder how much of our own daily background, the zoning, the cameras, the commutes, is just an old answer to some political problem nobody remembers was ever a question.
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