Tokyo: history and heritage

Tokyo began as Edo, a castle town on a bay. For more than two and a half centuries it was the seat of the Tokugawa shoguns; in 1868 it became the capital of modern Japan. Twice in the twentieth century it was destroyed, by the earthquake of 1923 and by war, and twice it was rebuilt, into the city of many centres you see today.

At a glance

Population: about 14.2 million in the Tokyo Metropolis (estimate for 1 October 2024, Statistics Bureau of Japan); the wider capital region is home to well over 30 million.

Names through history: Edo (“estuary”), renamed Tokyo (“eastern capital”) in 1868.

A castle town on a bay that became the seat of the shoguns, then the capital of modern Japan.

Shaped by: Edo Castle (1457), the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867), the Meiji Restoration and the move of the imperial court (1868–69), the Great Kantō Earthquake (1923), rebuilding after 1945, and the Olympic Games of 1964 and 2020 (held in 2021).

UNESCO: the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno, part of “The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier” (2016).

Edo Castle

In 1457 a warrior-poet, Ōta Dōkan, built a castle on the low hills above a small fishing village at the mouth of the Hirakawa River, where the Imperial Palace stands today. The village was called Edo.

The shogun’s city

In 1603 the Tokugawa clan made Edo the seat of its shogunate, and for more than 250 years the real government of Japan sat here, while the emperor remained in Kyoto. The castle’s moats and stone walls still stand around the palace gardens. Feudal lords were required to spend alternate years in Edo, and the city filled with their mansions, their retainers and the merchants and craftsmen who served them.

Merchants and the floating world

Nihonbashi was the bridge from which the five great highways ran out across Japan, and the merchant quarters around it gave the city its department stores: Mitsukoshi traces its lineage to a kimono shop of 1673. Kabuki, ukiyo-e prints, sushi and soba all took their modern forms in Edo; Hokusai was born in Sumida, across the river.

Tokyo, the eastern capital

In 1868 the shogunate fell, the city was renamed Tokyo, and the imperial court moved here from Kyoto. The new capital looked to the West: Japan’s first railway ran from Shimbashi to Yokohama in 1872, brick buildings rose in Ginza and Marunouchi, and Tokyo Station opened in 1914.

Fire, earthquake and war

On 1 September 1923 the Great Kantō Earthquake and the fires that followed destroyed much of Tokyo and Yokohama. The city was rebuilt, then devastated again by air raids in 1945. Its recovery was symbolised by Tokyo Tower in 1958 and by the Olympic Games of 1964, when the first Shinkansen opened between Tokyo and Osaka.

The city of many centres

Since then Tokyo has grown into a city of many centres: Shinjuku’s towers, Shibuya’s crossing, the hills developments of Roppongi, Toranomon and Azabudai, and Tokyo Skytree across the river. The city hosted the Olympic Games again in 2021, and the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which tells its story, reopened in 2026.

Our advice: begin at the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace, on the site of Edo Castle, walk to the Nihonbashi bridge, then go on to Asakusa and the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Ryōgoku, so that you travel from 1457 to today in a day.

Sources

Population: Statistics Bureau of Japan, population estimates (1 October 2024). History: Tokyo Metropolitan Government, History of Tokyo; Edo-Tokyo Museum; Imperial Household Agency (East Gardens of the Imperial Palace); JR East and JR Central; UNESCO World Heritage Centre.