Tokyo東京

Edo began as a fishing village and a small fort built by the warrior Ōta Dōkan in 1457 on a bluff above a tidal bay. Tokugawa Ieyasu took it as his base in 1590 and found mostly marsh and inlets. After he became shōgun in 1603, regional lords were ordered to supply labour and money for huge works: a hill in Kanda was cut down to fill the Hibiya inlet, canals were dug, and the castle became the largest in Japan. From 1635 the alternate-attendance system made every lord keep a residence in Edo and spend every other year there, filling the city with samurai households.

Fire shaped the town. The Great Fire of Meireki in 1657 killed perhaps 100,000 people and destroyed the castle keep, which was never rebuilt. Afterwards the shogunate widened streets, made firebreaks and moved temples to the edges of the city. Blazes were so frequent that people called them the flowers of Edo. Even so, the population passed a million in the early 18th century, making Edo one of the largest cities in the world.

In 1868 the shogunate fell, the city was renamed Tokyo, eastern capital, and the young Emperor Meiji moved into the castle, now the Imperial Palace. Brick streets appeared in Ginza after a fire in 1872, and the first railway ran to Yokohama the same year. On 1 September 1923, just before noon, the Great Kantō earthquake struck. Fires spread through wooden neighbourhoods and about 105,000 people died across the region. In the aftermath, false rumours led vigilantes to kill thousands of Korean residents.

US incendiary raids in 1944–45 burned much of the city again. The raid of 9–10 March 1945 alone killed an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people, mostly in the eastern low-lying wards. Recovery was fast: the 1964 Olympics brought the Shinkansen, the monorail and elevated expressways. The city has since hosted a second Olympics, delayed to 2021, and counts about 14 million people in the metropolis and some 37 million or more in the wider region.

The oldest split in the city is between yamanote and shitamachi. Samurai took the higher ground west of the castle, the yamanote, while merchants and artisans packed the reclaimed lowland to the east, the shitamachi or low city. The line blurred long ago, but the eastern districts along the Sumida River, Asakusa, Ueno, Yanaka, Ningyōchō and Fukagawa, still have more shrines per street, more family shops and a stronger festival life.

Nihonbashi was the commercial heart of Edo and the starting point of the five great highways; distances in Japan are still measured from a marker on its bridge, the current stone bridge dating from 1911. The fish market stood here until 1923. Ginza takes its name from a silver mint set up in 1612. Marunouchi, next to Tokyo Station, was bought by Mitsubishi in 1890 and built up with red brick offices nicknamed Londontown, now replaced by towers.

Asakusa grew as a temple town and then an entertainment district. After 1873 part of the temple land became a public park, and its sixth block, Rokku, filled with theatres and, from 1903, some of the country’s first cinemas. A twelve-storey tower, the Ryōunkaku, stood there from 1890 until the 1923 earthquake. Ueno was the site of a battle in 1868 between shogunate loyalists and the new government; its park, opened in 1873, now holds the national museums and a zoo.

The west is newer. Shinjuku began as a post town on the Kōshū highway and boomed as suburban railways met there after 1923; its station now handles more passengers than any other in the world. Shibuya grew around the terminals of private railways and is known for the Hachikō statue, honouring a dog who waited for his dead master in the 1920s and 30s. Harajuku’s fashion streets sit beside the forested approach to Meiji Jingu, opened in 1920.

Yanaka is the best place to see what survived. The area escaped much of the damage of 1923 and 1945, so wooden houses, small temples and narrow lanes remain. Across the river, Kiyosumi and Fukagawa hold Edo-period garden and shrine sites, and the Fukagawa Edo Museum rebuilds a street of the 1840s at full scale, complete with a fire watchtower, a boathouse and a row of tenement houses, nagaya, where most Edo townspeople lived.

Little in Tokyo is old, and the reasons are visible if you know them. Wooden buildings burned, the 1923 earthquake and the 1945 raids cleared whole districts, and Japanese houses have long been treated as depreciating goods, often rebuilt after 30 years. Strict earthquake codes, tightened in 1981 and again after 1995, also push owners to replace rather than repair. The result is a patchwork of small plots, each with its own building from a different decade.

The survivors are worth seeking out. The corner towers and stone walls of Edo Castle still stand around the palace, and the Fujimi turret is from the 17th century. Tokyo Station, designed by Tatsuno Kingo and opened in 1914, lost its domes in 1945 and had them rebuilt in 2012. Buildings of the late 1920s and 30s, such as the Wakō clock tower in Ginza from 1932, show the Art Deco taste of the reconstruction years.

Modern Tokyo has several landmarks of world architecture. Tange Kenzō’s Yoyogi National Gymnasium, with its swooping suspended roof, was built for the 1964 Olympics, and his twin-towered Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building opened in 1991 with a free observation floor. The Metabolist Nakagin Capsule Tower in Ginza, from 1972, was demolished in 2022, and some capsules went to museums. Tokyo Skytree, at 634 metres, opened in 2012.

At street level, look for the zakkyo building: a narrow tower of bars and shops, one per floor, with a column of signs down the front. It exists because land is expensive and plots are small, and it explains why so many good restaurants are up a lift on the sixth floor. Residential streets are low-rise and quiet, with potted plants on the pavement, because zoning allows tall buildings on main roads and little ones behind.

Edo was a city of single men, samurai on duty and labourers from the provinces, many without kitchens. Street stalls fed them fast: soba noodles, tempura on skewers, grilled eel, and sushi. Hand-pressed nigiri is usually credited to the Edo cook Hanaya Yohei in the 1820s, though dates vary. The word Edomae, in front of Edo, first meant fish from the bay; now it signals the Tokyo style of sushi, where fish is cured, marinated or simmered before it meets the rice.

Soba, not udon, is the Tokyo noodle, and old soba shops in Kanda and Asakusa still serve it with a strong, dark dipping sauce. The fish market moved from Nihonbashi to Tsukiji after the 1923 earthquake, opening in 1935, and then to Toyosu in 2018. Tsukiji’s outer market of small shops and stalls stayed where it was. Tsukishima, a reclaimed island, is known for monjayaki, a runny griddle dish once sold as a children’s snack.

Meiji Tokyo was where Western food became Japanese. Kimuraya in Ginza created anpan, a soft bun filled with sweet bean paste, in 1874. Rengatei in Ginza is widely credited with the breaded pork cutlet that became tonkatsu. In 1910 Rairaiken in Asakusa is often named as the first popular ramen shop for Japanese customers. Western-style cafés and beer halls followed, and the yōshoku of curry, omelette rice and croquettes became standard family food.

After 1945 black markets near stations turned into rows of tiny bars and grills, the yokochō. Omoide Yokochō by Shinjuku station and Nonbei Yokochō in Shibuya still keep this scale, with six to ten seats per bar. Today Tokyo has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city, but the everyday food culture is in its standing soba counters, depachika food halls and set-lunch shops.

Edo counted three great festivals: the Sannō Matsuri of Hie Shrine, the Kanda Matsuri of Kanda Myōjin, and the Fukagawa festival of Tomioka Hachimangū. Sannō and Kanda were once allowed to parade into the castle grounds, and today they alternate their grand years: Kanda in May of odd-numbered years, Sannō in June of even-numbered ones. Fukagawa is known as the water-throwing festival, with spectators soaking the mikoshi carriers in August.

Asakusa’s Sanja Matsuri on the third weekend of May is the most crowded, drawing up to two million people over three days. About a hundred neighbourhood mikoshi are carried on the Saturday, and on the Sunday three large shrines, each weighing around a tonne, leave Asakusa Shrine in the early morning. Sensō-ji also holds the Hōzuki market on 9–10 July, when a visit is said to bring the merit of 46,000 days, and the battledore market, Hagoita-ichi, on 17–19 December.

Summer evenings belong to fireworks and dancing. The Sumida River fireworks on the last Saturday of July trace back to displays of the 1730s and draw around a million spectators. Kōenji’s Awa Odori in late August fills the streets with dance troupes. In November, the Tori-no-Ichi fairs at Ōtori shrines sell decorated bamboo rakes to gather in luck for the coming year.

The New Year is the biggest event of all. Meiji Jingu usually has the most first-shrine visitors in Japan, some three million over the first three days, with queues managed by police. Sensō-ji, Kanda Myōjin and local shrines fill too. Shops mostly reopen on 2 or 3 January with lucky-bag sales, fukubukuro. Visitors who want the atmosphere without the crush can go on 4 or 5 January, when stalls are still up but queues are short.

The rail network is the city’s skeleton. The JR Yamanote Line loops about 35 kilometres through 30 stations in roughly an hour, and more than a dozen metro and private lines cross it. Rush hours from about 07:30 to 09:30 are dense, and women-only cars run on many lines in the morning. The last trains leave around midnight, which is why karaoke boxes, manga cafés and capsule hotels fill with people who missed them.

Most Tokyoites live in small flats and use the city as their living room: cafés for work, public baths for relaxing, parks for picnics, konbini for almost anything. Sentō, the neighbourhood public baths, have shrunk from over 2,600 in the late 1960s to a few hundred, but those that remain are cheap and friendly places to see local life. The police box, kōban, on many corners gives directions as often as it deals with crime.

Order is kept by habit as much as rule. Rubbish is sorted into burnable, non-burnable, plastic and bottles, and collected on set days. Neighbourhood associations run festival stalls and disaster drills, and every district has marked evacuation parks. On 1 September, the anniversary of the 1923 earthquake, the country holds Disaster Prevention Day drills. Visitors will notice the green signs and hear the tests of public loudspeakers.

For all its size, Tokyo is a city of villages. Each station has its own shopping street, its own shrine, its own bakery and bar regulars. The best way to see this is to take a train a few stops from a famous sight and walk: Asakusa to Kuramae, Shibuya to Tomigaya, Ueno to Yanaka. The scale drops and the everyday city appears.