Were it not for the whim of a small-time warrior, Tokyo might have idled away its days as a slumbering fishing village on the banks of the river Sumida-gawa. In 1457 Ota Dokan, a warrior lord, built himself a castle overlooking the river. The settlement was known as Edo, meaning “mouth of the estuary”. Dokan’s castle would become the symbol of Tokyo and it is the ancestor of today’s Imperial Palace.
Edo started its days as a minor satellite of Kyoto, a sophisticated city in southern Japan which was the seat of imperial power. In a country riven with political power struggles, Edo’s distance from Kyoto proved to be a selling point. In 1590 Tokugawa Ieyasu, a restless warlord, chose to make it his base instead of Kyoto. When, in 1603, Ieyasu became Japan’s shogun, he moved the seat of government to Edo, where it has remained ever since.
For two centuries, Edo shared Japan's self-imposed isolation
Ieyasu and his successors were known as the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868). Ieyasu built the imposing Chiyoda Castle (also called Edo Castle) and oversaw the development of the city, with the construction of new bridges, waterways and a port. He kept his daimyo (feudal lords) in check by ordering them to spend alternate years at Edo, and also fiercely protected the country from foreign influence and colonisation. For 200 years Edo shared Japan’s self-imposed isolation from the outside world. This was the period of sakoku (“closed country”).
But the powerful shogunate could not protect Edo from fires, which came so frequently that they were dubbed “the flowers of Edo”. The city’s wooden buildings and narrow streets were subjected to nearly 20 major fires over the course of the Tokugawa era. The worst was in 1657, when large sections of the shogun’s castle went up in flames and over 100,000 city-dwellers perished.
Edo was divided into two areas. To the west of the shogun’s castle was Yamanote (“High City”), a hilly district comprising shrines and vast estates belonging to samurai and the nobility. To the east was Shitamachi (“Low City”), a lively warren of workers and merchants.
The population grew at a frenetic pace. By 1750, with 1m inhabitants, Edo had become the world’s largest city. The long period of peace under the Tokugawa fostered the growth of an artistic community. Workshops sprang up, producing pottery and calligraphy. Artists such as Hiroshige popularised ukiyo-e (“images of the floating world”), painted woodblock prints depicting the hedonistic pleasures of city life.
Foreign affairs
Japan’s isolation came to an end in July 1853, when four warships under the command of American Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into the harbour at Edo. Perry demanded trading ties with Japan and promised to return the following year. In February 1854, after nearly a month of negotiations, the shogunate reluctantly allowed American ships to land at two ports: Hakodate on Hokkaido and Shimoda, near Edo Bay. Agreements with British, Russian and Dutch traders followed soon after.
Foreign penetration was unpopular and loosened the Tokugawas' grip on power. Anti-foreign feeling expressed itself in Edo with attacks on the American consul and the British legation (which was burned down). After short battles, the 15th shogun surrendered the throne and 268 years of warrior rule and self-imposed isolation came to an end. Japan—and Tokyo—entered the world stage.
Modern Meiji
Corbis
Corbis
With the fall of the Tokugawa shoguns, power returned to the emperor (or, rather, to his circle of advisors). The period of modernisation that followed became known as the Meiji Restoration. In a clear break from the past, the Emperor Meiji moved the imperial court from Kyoto to Edo, re-named Tokyo (“eastern capital”). That same year Tokyo became the official capital of Japan.
The modernisation of Tokyo now began in earnest. “Tokyo prefecture” (Greater Tokyo) was divided into wards (ku) and a “red line” defined the city’s borders. A mayor was voted in and in 1889 a city council elected.
A flurry of projects began to define Tokyo’s status as a new international power. In 1871 the Tokyo National Museum opened, and in 1877 Tokyo Imperial University was established (later renamed the University of Tokyo). The Tokyo Stock Exchange opened for trading in 1878. The government established infrastructure befitting a modern capital city. A railway line, Japan’s first (and built by British engineers), opened between Tokyo and Yokohama in 1872. The 106km Tokyo-Maebashi line followed soon after. In 1887 the capital got its first electric lights, courtesy of Mitsui, a thriving merchant house.
Partly as the result of yet another devastating fire (in 1872), a new, upmarket district emerged west of the Imperial Palace. This was the Ginza, built in modern red brick by a British architect, and sporting a westernised feel that came to symbolise the Meiji zeitgeist. Nearby, the Mitsubishi company turned land outside the castle moat into a business centre to accommodate its shipbuilding and trading enterprises.
Shattered
The first world war largely bypassed Japan, though the country, by now surging ahead economically, declared war on the side of Britain. On September 1st 1923 Tokyo suffered a devastating blow: the Great Kanto Earthquake. This monstrous tremor, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, sparked off two days of fire that reduced three-quarters of the city’s housing to ashes. The death toll was close to 140,000.
Otis Manchester Poole, manager of Dodwell & Co., was at his office in Yokohama when the tremors began. In his book “The Death of Yokohama”, he wrote:
“I had scarcely returned to my desk when, without warning, came the first rumbling jar of an earthquake, a sickening sway, the vicious grinding of timbers and, in a few seconds, a crescendo of turmoil as the floor began to heave and the building to lurch drunkenly....The walls bulged as if made of cardboard and the din became awful...For perhaps half a minute the fabric of our surroundings held; then came disintegration. Slabs of plaster left the ceilings and fell about our ears...wires, flew out and crashed to splinters...How long it lasted, I don't know. It seemed an eternity; but the official record says four minutes.”
Tokyo proved resilient. Within a couple of decades, the city had been rebuilt, much of it according to new building codes. Many companies opened palatial new premises. Mitsui, for example, hired American architects to create an imposing new office building. In 1927 the first subway line, the Ueno-Asakusa, opened. From then on a swiftly growing network of subway and bus lines edged out the trolley system.
Between 1920 and 1932 Tokyo’s population jumped from 3.7m to 7m. In 1932 the government pushed back the boundaries of the capital to include 20 more wards. Tokyo was now the second-largest city in the world (after New York). For the first time, cultural life in the capital began to reflect trends in America. Hollywood films became wildly popular in Tokyo, and baseball games attracted young people keen to absorb trends from the West.
After recovering from the Great Depression, Japanese industry, once powered by textiles, took its cue from military needs. In 1931 Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in north China began. Shortly afterwards the country pulled out of the League of Nations and, with the Anti-Comintern Pact, joined forces with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
Second world war
On December 7th 1941 Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. This fateful move pulled the United States into the war and proved devastating for Tokyo.
Four months later, American bombers began three years of punishing attacks on Tokyo, aimed at crippling the city’s industry. For three days in March 1945 American planes dropped incendiary bombs on the city. On the worst night, March 9th 1945, 100,000 people were killed and 23,000 homes destroyed.
Even as the bombs rained down, Tokyo reshuffled its municipal government. Long overseen by mayors appointed by the scandal-prone city council, the authorities in 1943 finally abolished the office of mayor—replaced by a generally elected governor—and reclassified Tokyo as a metropolis.
At the war's end, the city was devastated
In August 1945, Japan finally surrendered. For Tokyo, no less than the country as a whole, the war had been a disaster. Around 250,000 city dwellers were either dead or missing, and so many people had fled that the city’s population had dropped below half its pre-war level. The Lower City, the former home to merchants and artisans, was especially hard-hit. But Edo Castle and Senso-ji, the city’s oldest temple, had also been destroyed and Kawasaki and Yokohama, on the south-western outskirts of Tokyo, lay in near-ruins.
Occupation and recovery
Weeks after bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Americans moved in to Tokyo. General Douglas MacArthur was placed in charge of the occupation of Japan. He worked from what is today the Daiichi Seimei Building. In 1946 a group of American lawyers, overseen by MacArthur, drew up the Showa constitution, which abolished feudalism, demilitarised Japan and pushed the country towards democracy. Large trading firms, including Mitsui and Mitsubishi, were broken up.
For the second time in only 30 years, Tokyo was rebuilt—this time with American aid (fuel, food and raw materials). Tensions between Japanese living in Tokyo and the occupying forces were high. In 1952 anti-American riots took place in the grounds of the Imperial Palace. In 1968 students demonstrated at Tokyo University.
The Japanese economy, devastated by defeat, received a boost from an improbable source in 1951: the Korean War (1950-53). Factories in Tokyo once more buzzed with activity, producing arms and supplies for the US forces. In 1952, one year after Prime Minister Yoshida signed the Treaty of Peace in San Francisco, Allied occupation ended and Tokyo took control of its own fate.
Corbis
Corbis
A defining debut
Tokyo’s defining post-war debut came in 1964 when the city hosted the Olympic Games. By most accounts a well-run operation, the Games were preceded by a frenzy of construction. An elaborate network of freeways, some of them elevated and some created from reclaimed canals, connected different parts of the metropolis, and partially alleviated congestion caused by Edo’s narrow, winding streets and alleys.
In 1964 high-speed passenger trains, shinkansen (“bullet trains”), began their first journey, travelling at 130mph (209kph) between Tokyo and Osaka. And so beautiful was the national sports centre built for the Olympics that it set its mastermind, Kenzo Tange, on course to receive the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1987 (the first Japanese to be honoured in this way).
Economic lift…
The urbanisation of Japan proceeded apace. By 1970, one in every nine Japanese lived in the capital, which now had a population of over 9m. Despite an international oil crisis, the country’s industrial output soared. Propelled by a skilled and tireless workforce, Japan produced high-quality consumer products, such as cars, televisions and radios for foreign and domestic consumption.
Tokyo was at the helm of this boom, producing nearly one-fifth of the country’s total manufactured goods. Heavy industry was concentrated along the north-western shores of Tokyo Bay, an area known as the Keihin Industrial Region. Here, land-reclamation projects cleared the way for oil refineries, assembly plants, steel mills and shipyards and manufacturing plants.
Closer to the urban centre, the printing and publishing industries also grew, turning Tokyo into the nation’s media capital. By the early 1990s, 2,400 periodicals were being published in the city, which also boasted eight general newspapers, including the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Asahi Shimbun.
Marunouchi, the business district, was soon awash with high-rise, state-of-the-art glass and steel buildings
Tokyo poured its new wealth into architecture. Marunouchi, the business district east of Imperial Palace, was transformed with high-rise, state-of-the-art glass and steel buildings. Ginza, to the south, continued to attract prestigious fashion and jewellers and earned mention in the same breath as New York’s Fifth Avenue and London’s Bond Street. In Shinjuku, a sub-centre in the west of the city, the changes were even more dramatic. Tokyo’s extravagant Metropolitan Government Office, designed by architect Kenzo Tange, went up in west Shinjuku in the late-1980s. The twin-towered, high-tech complex is Tokyo’s tallest and bespeaks the high hopes of the decade.
Even so, prosperity came at a cost. Property became 20 times as expensive as it had been in 1955, and living conditions were often cramped.
…and recession
Then, as economists are fond of saying, the bubble burst. In the early 1990s, foreign investors pulled out and financial and real-estate markets plummeted. Alarmingly weak banks pushed the situation to crisis in 1997 and the government ran large deficits while adopting Keynesian tactics to stimulate the economy out of its recession. Economic instability was accompanied by social problems. In 1995, commuters on Tokyo’s metro received a blast of deadly sarin gas from Aum Shinrikyo, a doomsday cult: 12 people were killed and 5,500 injured (see article: The crazies and their poison, 13/8/1998).
The city government urgently needs to address housing shortages, congestion and pollution
Tokyo also faces a daunting array of social challenges. With property at such as premium, homelessness is on the rise and the capital remains far and away the most expensive city in the world (despite the dip in property prices caused by the late-1990s recession). The city is also battling to contain the side effects of excessive sprawl. Congestion, pollution and critical housing shortages are all urgent priorities for the harried municipal government. The cost of living in Tokyo, meanwhile, remains exorbitant (see article: Living costs, 18/1/2001).
Peril of a different sort comes from the ground. Like San Franscisco, Tokyo is built on bayside marshlands, which poses a particular risk for large earthquakes. Large seismic waves can “liquefy” the soil—water droplets shake free, transforming the ground into a treacherous heave of fluid. In the event of a major quake, 12% of Tokyo’s land could turn to mush.
By most predictions, Tokyo is due for another massive earthquake in the next 100-200 years. Engineers have pronounced the city’s high-rises earthquake-proof for quakes of magnitudes up to 7.2 on the Richter scale. But the Great Kanto quake of 1923 tallied 7.9—and in any case, if the Kanto is anything to go by, the most fearsome damage comes not from the tremors, but from post-quake fires. Tokyo’s fate may rest in nature’s hand.
The city’s economy remains vulnerable. Tokyo’s recovery—and the economic health of the country as a whole—hinges on continued restructuring of the banking system to deflect further crisis. In early 2000, Tokyo’s legislature moved to reduce the city’s huge deficit by levying a 3% tax on the profits of large banks in the capital (foreign banks were excluded). The international dotcom crash put paid to the city’s burgeoning high-tech sector.
In April 1999 Tokyo replaced its governor Yuko Aoshima, a former television comic, with the abrasive Shintaro Ishihara, a right-wing populist and best-selling novelist, who was re-elected to a second term with an overwhelming majority in 2003. Nationally, the Liberal Democratic Party ditched Yoshiro Mori in April 2001, replacing him with Junichiro Koizumi, a tousle-haired, media-savvy Elvis enthusiast. Mr Koizumi consolidated his hold on power with a resounding victory in the Upper House elections in July 2001.
AP
AP
The view from Roppongi Hills
Perhaps the most striking new physical feature of the city today is the burst of tall buildings under construction. By the end of 2003, new office buildings and hotels had opened in the leading parts of the city: in Marunouchi, where Mitsubishi took the lead; in Shimbashi where Dentsu, the world's largest ad agency, found a new home; in Roppongi, where Mori Building opened a $4 billion complex; and in Shinagawa, where several big new buildings were completed close to the station. In the autumn of 2003, Junichiro Koizumi, fortified by the upbeat mood, called for a snap election. He was returned to office in November with a majority in the Lower House. The losers in the elections were the socialist and communist parties. Thereafter Mr. Koizumi continued with his campaign to whittle away the power of government officials, and to liberalize Asia's largest economy.
To be sure, not all the signs are encouraging. Homeless men flock to the parks and the city's main commuter centres, notably Shinjuku. Chinese gangsters supply entertainment areas with heroin imported from North Korea. The strength of the yen against the dollar appears to be undermining Japan's recovery. But Tokyo remains a monumentally active conurbation, with a mass of attractions for visitors from overseas. New hotels are opening up all over the city. Vigorous Japanese cultural forms—such as manga (comics) and anime (animation films)—are sweeping the world. Plans are afoot for “mega-structure” buildings that would top anything seen in Tokyo so far.
