the SMRAA, which embodied distinctive colonial characteristics. The guiding ideology of the overall design was to build a high standard colonial city with sophisticated facilities, multiple functions and a large scale. Accordingly, nearly ¥7 million on average was allocated on a year-by-year basis for urban planning and construction during the period 1907 to 1931. The comprehensive plan was to ensure the comfort required by Japanese employees on Manchurian Railways, build up Changchun into a base for Japanese control of the whole Manchuria in order to provide an effective counterweight to Russia in this area of China. The city's role as a rail hub was underlined in its planning and construction, the main design concepts of which read as follows: under conventional grid pattern terms, two geoplagiotropic boulevards were newly carved eastward and westward from the grand square of the new railway station. The two helped form two intersections with the gridded prototypes, which led to two circles of South and West. The two sub-civic centres served as axes on which eight radial roads were blazed that took the shape of a sectoral structure. At that time, the radial circles and the design concept of urban roads were quite advanced and scientific. It activated to great extent the serious urban landscapes as well as clearly identifying the traditional gridded pattern. With the new Changchun railway station as its centre, the urban plan divided the SMRAA into various specified areas: residential quarters 15%, commerce 33%, grain depot 19%, factories 12%, public entertainment 9%, and administrative organs (including a Japanese garrison) 12%. Each block provided the railway station with supporting and systematic services dependent on its own functions. In the meantime, a comprehensive system of judiciary and military police was established which was totally independent of China. That accounted for the widespread nature of military facilities within the urban construction area of , such as the railway garrison, the gendarmerie and the police department, with its 18 local police stations. Perceiving Changchun as a tabula rasa upon which to construct new and sweeping conceptions of the built environment, the Japanese used the city as a practical laboratory to create two distinct and idealized urban milieus, each appropriate to a particular era. From 1906 to 1931, Changchun served as a key railway town through which the Japanese orchestrated an informal empire. Between 1932 and 1945, the city became home to a grandiose new Asian