The Tokyo Traveler

Tokyo is the capital of Japan but that wasn’t always the case and the city wasn’t always known as Tokyo either. Over 400 years ago the city was named Edo and the capital of Japan was Kyoto (capital city). Edo stared as a village in 1603 and was the center of the government and culture with a population of over a million people by the end of the 18th century. In 1868 the city was renamed Tokyo (eastern capital) and succeeded Kyoto as the capital of Japan.

Interesting Facts:

• The image on the right is the Kanji (Japanese script) for Tokyo.
• Tokyo is the most densely populated prefecture in Japan with approximately 12.5 million residents as of October 1, 2005. These residents all fit into an area of 2,187 square kilometers (1359 square miles)
• Tokyo is the third smallest prefecture in Japan by area. The area of Tokyo is 0.6% of the total area of Japan but it is home to 10% of the total population of Japan.
• The National Census in 2000 lists the daytime population of Tokyo as 14.667 million people, which is 2.650 million more than the nighttime population figure of 12.017 million.
• Tokyo is positioned approximately in the center of the Japanese archipelago which consists of almost 3,000 islands and is almost 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) long.
• Tokyo is made up of 23 special wards (ku in Japanese), 26 cities (shi), 5 towns (cho) and 8 villages (son).

For more information take a read through the Overview of Tokyo presented by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

Photo Credit: Personal Collection

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