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The Kanto and Johto regions were the two earliest regional leagues and used to be the most prestigious. Due to the urbanization of the regions and people’s occupations and lifestyles not being as reliant on Pokemon, however, the last two decades saw the decline in Pokemon training and league participation. Contributing to this are the higher reliance of white collar or technology-based employment in the two regions, and the consequently higher need and admission rates for tertiary education in both regions, which further deprives potential trainers from their Pokemon training experience in their teenage and most formative years. In addition, the traditional way of relying on Pokemon for people’s daily economic activities has largely ceased to exist in the two regions except for some niche applications. After all factory machines, electricity, and artificial power sources including fossil fuels and uranium have all been powering the Shoyoese economic powerhouse more reliably than anything else before.
The decline in league participators has been such that, since 1997, the Johto and Kanto Leagues amalgamated with shared management, a common Elite Four and Champion, and shared regional leagues with only the gyms and their associations being separate from each other. There were also other reforms to ease participation in the two leagues, including the allowance for multiple deferments between battles for gym badge examinations and in league tournaments. Labour unions, which traditionally relied on Pokemon for picketing purposes, have also helped to mitigate the decline in league participation by demanding better working conditions including long service leave and flextime involving being able to bank hours in lieu. There are also efforts in re-discovering the lost art of living with Pokemon for farmwork and crafts, partially due to the environmental destructions caused by the modern lifestyle, and also in reaction to the excessive consumerism that went out of hand during the bubble era of the 1970s and 1980s. These efforts seemed to have finally paid off in 2015, when it saw an increase in the number of league entrants and the number of registered gym trainers for the first time in four decades.
Kanto League Gyms
Many of the Kanto League Gyms have private involvement or ownership, who unsurprisingly have the capital to hire people, own facilities, and pay the bills. Yamabuki and Tamamushi Gyms in particular are not only 100% private-owned as part of their sponsors’ branding efforts, but are often audited and imposed additional levy by the Internal Revenue Service [歳入庁] under the Ministries of Finance [財務省] and Ministry of General Affairs [総務省] as part of their ongoing league membership conditions. Most of that levy is passed onto the other gyms in smaller cities as part of public funding.