- Japanese: 東京 (toukyou)
Tokyo is the de facto Imperial and political capital of Japan, as well as being one of the chief commercial, financial, and arts centers in the world. As a metropolitan prefecture headed not by a mayor but by a governor, Tôkyô-to (東京都, Tokyo Metropolis) is not officially considered a "city," but the 23 special wards (tokubetsu ku) and 39 additional municipalities which comprise the metropolitan prefecture constitute one of the largest and most populous metropolitan areas in the world, and are home to a very significant portion of the Japanese national population. The Izu Islands which stretch south from Tokyo proper, along with the distant Ogasawara Islands, are also administered as part of Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture; both consist of small, sparsely populated islands, many of which are uninhabited nature preserves or are restricted to military use.
Formerly known as Edo, and the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate from 1603 until 1868, the city was formally renamed Tokyo ("Eastern Capital") on 1868/7/17, and became the Imperial capital sometime after that, in the 1870s or 1880s.
History
Meiji Period
The relaxation of sankin kôtai obligations in 1862 meant that domains no longer needed to maintain mansions and extensive staffs or retainer bases in Edo. Combined with the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1868 Meiji Restoration, the abolition of the han in 1871, and the attenuation of samurai stipends, many daimyô abandoned their mansions in the city in the 1860s-1870s, and returned to their home provinces along with their families and (former) retainers, with many other samurai leaving the city in other ways. Edo thus dropped from a population height of around 1.3 million in the early 19th century to just over 500,000 in 1869, returning to peak levels only around 1889.[1] The dramatic loss of so many consumers from the city over a relatively short period of time also had a significant depressive effect upon the city's commercial economy, from which it also took some time to recover.
Though Tokyo is generally said today to have become the Imperial capital of Japan in 1868, when Edo was officially renamed Tokyo, Edo castle was designated the Imperial Palace, and the Meiji Emperor took up residence there, in fact there was little agreement at the time that Tokyo was to become (or had become) the Imperial capital. According to various metrics or definitions, Tokyo was not in fact the Imperial capital until sometime in the 1870s or 1880s, with some of the most significant Meiji government officials describing it as an anzaisho, a temporary court, up until 1889. Figures such as Etô Shinpei and Ôki Takatô, the first governor of Tokyo, expressing fears that with the Boshin War not yet over, Japan might split into east and west, proposed establishing Edo as a second imperial capital, a capital of the East, such that the Emperor might travel between Kyoto and Tokyo, and in so doing watch over the entire country, and enforce unity. Kido Takayoshi similarly advocated having Edo as an Eastern Capital, Osaka as a Western Capital, and Kyoto as the Imperial Capital. As a result of these concerns, the Imperial Edict which officially declared Edo "Tokyo" on 1868/7/17 included that "the emperor looked upon ‘the realm as one house, the East and West equally.’"[2]
Other officials, including Ôkubo Toshimichi and Ôkuma Shigenobu seem to have been less concerned, immediately, with what Tokyo should be or become, but rather with getting the Emperor out of Kyoto, and having him tour the provinces, to be seen by the people, and to be seen surveying the land and the people, in order to reinforce the nationalistic connection between the people and the Emperor (and the nation); these tours were also aimed at turning the earlier conception of the emperor as lofty and aloof from politics into a conception of the Emperor as existing at the center of, or even embodying or being equivalent to, government.[2]
For these reasons, little effort was made in the first decades of the Meiji period to develop Tokyo into a modern Imperial national capital. National monuments, broad boulevards suitable for national parades and large public gatherings only began to be built, for the most part, in the 1880s, and for at least a few years after the Restoration, many former daimyô mansions, as well as much of the Imperial Palace (Edo castle) itself, were simply left to fall into disrepair.
Taishô through World War II
Postwar to Today
By the 1970s, fully one-quarter of Japan's population lived in or around Tokyo.[3] Today, that proportion is even higher.
References
- Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy, University of California Press (1996).