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Japan2008
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Japan 2000 - 2001
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Tokyo - Japan
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| Tokyo - All you need to know. |
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Thank you for visiting my
site! However, I have moved my Travel Log to this
address:
http://pontifiction.wordpress.com/ Please go here for
the latest Log!
Tokyo is the capital of Japan,
and the nation's commercial and industrial center. Situated
on Tokyo Bay along the Pacific coast of central Honshu
Island, the city proper comprises twenty-three urban wards.
The wider metropolitan area (consolidated in 1943 as
Tokyo-to, or Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture) includes
twentyseven smaller cities, one county, and four island
administrative units with numerous towns and villages, all
occupying an area of 2,168 square kilometers. The
metropolitan prefecture has an estimated population of 11.8
million (2002 estimate).
Its site has a long history of habitation, as proven by
excavated artifacts from the Jomon (10,000 BCE–300 BCE),
Yayoi (300 BCE–300 CE), and Kofun (300–700) periods. In the
seventh century, the area was made part of Musashi Province.
Its official founding date is 1457, when warlord Ota Dokan
erected a castle overlooking the centuries-old fishing
village of Edo (the name means "river gate"), located near
the mouth of the Sumida River and bordering the fertile
Kanto Plain.
In 1590, national unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598)
sent his ally and rival Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616) off to
rule Edo. After Hideyoshi's death, Ieyasu completed Japan's
unification and in 1603 founded the Tokugawa shogunate in
Edo. On the ruins of the first castle, he constructed his
own fortress;
Tokyo is known for its dense population and crowded streets,
such as this street filled with shoppers in August 1991.
(CATHERINE KARNOW/CORBIS)Tokyo is known for its dense
population and crowded streets, such as this street filled
with shoppers in August 1991. (CATHERINE KARNOW/CORBIS)
it burned in 1647. Edo suffered more than ninety serious
fires over the next centuries. The town which grew up around
the castle consisted of the so-called High City (Yamanote)
of samurai residences and the Low City (Shitamachi) of
workshops, markets, theaters, bathhouses, and commoners's
homes on the northwestern marshlands. Artisans, merchants,
and peasants flooded into Shitamachi to work in an Edo
swelled by the 1635 directive that the nation's some 300
feudal lords establish residences there. A city of canals
and the terminus of five great highways, Edo in 1720 had a
population of over a million, making it the world's most
populous city at that time.
The unexpected 1853 arrival of American ships, followed by
the devastating 1855 Ansei earthquake, helped to destabilize
the shogunate. In 1868 Edo was renamed Tokyo (the name means
"eastern capital") and the Emperor Meiji arrived from Kyoto
to take up residence in Edo Castle, rebuilt as the Imperial
Palace. Over the following decades Tokyo underwent rapid
modernization and intense growth. The 1923 earthquake almost
completely destroyed it; by 1930 it had risen again.
The World War II bombing raids once again leveled the city;
the war was followed by some seven years of Allied
occupation, administered from Tokyo. The economic recovery
of the 1950s and 1960s paved the way for the city to host
the 1964 Olympic Games and led to a new spurt of
construction. The ever-increasing land prices and housing
shortages were addressed by a program to create a series of
urban subcenters, contributing to the labyrinthine
conglomeration of selfcontained neighborhoods, retail hubs,
and satellite towns that Tokyo is today. Increasing
pollution forced large manufacturers to relocate to outlying
districts and onto land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay.
Today Tokyo is the nation's center for air and rail travel,
government offices, financial institutions, corporate
headquarters, mass media, the arts, and higher education
(with some 185 colleges and universities). Chief among its
numerous attractions are the historic Imperial Palace
grounds, Ueno Park with its zoo and many museums, and the
Meiji and Yasukuni shrine complexes. |
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