TOKYO-YOKOHAMA METROPOLITAN AREA

The premodern period Tokyo celebrated its 500th anniversary in 1957. The calculation was from the most likely date for the initial fortification of Edo. The structure cannot have been elaborate, probably little more than a house upon a low eminence with log ramparts. There must have been a village on the site from much earlier. The ancient Senso Temple (popularly called the Asakusa Kannon), east of Ueno station and near the Sumida, dates from perhaps the late 7th century (although nearly all its structures are postwar). The name Edo means something like estuary or inlet. The clan in possession of the area bore the name Edo, taken from the name of the village. Edo did not amount to much until the 17th century. The first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu, took possession of Edo in 1590 and in 1603 made it the seat of his government, which effectively controlled the country and left only ceremonial functions with the imperial court and Kyoto. The marshy estuary was largely filled in during the course of the century, and Nihombashi became the heart of the mercantile city. The military aristocracy did not disdain the flatlands, but they quite dominated the hilly regions to the west. The court aristocracy remained in Kyoto. Growth was rapid through the 17th and 18th centuries. Early in the Tokugawa period (16031867) Kyoto maintained its old cultural preeminence. Cultural hegemony then moved to Osaka, Japan's other great mercantile city. By the end of the 18th century it had moved to Edo, where it reposed in 1868, when the emperor moved from Kyoto and the name was changed to Tokyo. The Edo century, as it may be called, was not among Japan's finer periods for the graphic and literary arts, but it was very good for the theatre. The kabuki, the great love of the Edo townspeople, reached remarkable heights of subtlety and sophistication. Edo may well have become the largest city in the world in the 18th century. It passed a million people before London and Paris did and probably was larger than the capitals of the Ottoman and Chinese empires. At the end of the Tokugawa period the regions east of the castle were much more important than those to the west, where only a thin residential band lay. The districts immediately east of the castle and on beyond the Sumida River had become the most important cultural centre in the land. This changed utterly during the 20th century. Today the east has scarcely anything to offer in cultural terms, while the west has everything. Throughout its history the city has been prone to disaster. There were severe earthquakes between the arrival of the first shogun and the end of the Tokugawa regime, but the commonest disaster was fire, known as the flower of Edo. Though there were fires of great magnitude in 1923 and 1945, the flower gradually has been extirpated. The most considerable Edo fire occurred in 1657, which happened to be the city's bicentennial (though no one seems to have noticed). About two-thirds of the city was destroyed, including much of the castle, and upwards of 100,000 people died. Kawasaki was, during the Tokugawa centuries, the second stage from Nihombashi on the Tokaido, the main coastal road to Kyoto. Yokohama was an isolated fishing village that did not really emerge into history until after the visit of Commodore Matthew Perry and his black ships in 1853. Though it is not known exactly what stood on the Sumida estuary before 1457, Chiba may be called an older city than Edo-Tokyo: it had a castle from the 12th century. The Meiji period (186819l2) The population of the city plummeted during the disturbances that made it the capital. By the middle of the Meiji period it had returned to the highest Edo figure, and by the end of the reign it had passed two million. The city limits reached to the Shinagawa post stage on the south but fell short of Shinjuku on the west. On the north they passed a short distance beyond Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo), and on the east they stretched a short distance beyond the Sumida. At no point did they reach as far as the boundaries of the urban prefecture. Ginza, which had not amounted to much during the Tokugawa centuries, was thrust to the fore of civilization and enlightenmentby which was meant, essentially, Westernizationby an accident: the great fire of 1872. The rebuilding was in brick, a material not before used by the Japanese. Sometime later the Mitsubishi enterprises set about turning their meadow, vacant land within the outer castle moat, into a business centre. This became the Marunouchi district, also largely built of brick. Only fragments of the Ginza bricktown and of what came to be called the Mitsubishi Londontown survive. Monumental architecture in those years tended toward decorated European styles, though sometimes, as in the Bank of Japan building, Grecian austerity prevailed. Most of the city continued to be wooden, low, and of small units. No specimens of an earlier hybrid style, Western in many of its details but Japanese in its general aspect, survive in the city, but examples may still be found in the provinces. These were the years of the great national effortpresided over, of course, from Tokyoto catch up with the world. It was a huge success. By the end of the Meiji period, Japan was an ally of England and had won wars with China and Russia. The history of Yokohama begins just before Meiji. The Harris Treaty of 1858 provided that Kanagawa was to be among the ports opened to foreign trade. The Japanese quickly began having second thoughts. Kanagawa was a well-trodden place, the third stage from Nihombashi on the Tokaido. This seemed to invite trouble, the situation being one in which Japanese and foreigners could not easily be kept in their places. So Yokohama, a more isolated and easily policed spot, was opened instead. A fishing village, it lay some distance from the Tokaido road, beyond the inlet that was to become Yokohama Harbour. By the end of the Meiji it was numbered, along with Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya, and Kyoto, among the large cities of the nation. Japanese demography in those days was somewhat peculiar. There were the six cities just mentioned, no mid-size cities, and a multitude of small cities. Kawasaki was by the end of the Meiji period already a growing industrial centre. Chiba remained a sleepy country town. Kanagawa is now a part of Yokohama, near the central railway station. Tokyo formerly (until 1868) Edo, metropolitan complexcommonly called Greater Tokyoalong the northern and western shores of Tokyo Bay, on the Pacific coast of the island of Honshu, central Japan. At its centre is the metropolitan prefecture, or metropolis (to), of Tokyo, Japan's capital and largest city. Three prefectures (ken) bordering itSaitama on the north, Chiba on the east, and Kanagawa on the southmay be said to make up the remainder of the complex, but there is more than one definition of Greater Tokyo, and large numbers of people live beyond the four prefectures and commute to work in the region. The expression city of Tokyo usually refers to the 23 wards (ku) that constitute the city proper. In 1943, however, this city ceased to exist as an administrative unit and was subsumed within the larger Tokyo metropolis, which includes rural and mountainous regions west of the city and the Izu Islands, stretching southward from the mouth of Tokyo Bay, and the Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands, some 500 miles (800 kilometres) to the southeast in the Pacific Ocean. There are three other major cities within the metropolitan area. Yokohama, about 20 miles southwest of Tokyo, is the second largest city in Japan. The industrial city of Kawasaki lies between Tokyo and Yokohama. Both Yokohama and Kawasaki are in Kanagawa prefecture. Chiba, in Chiba prefecture east of Tokyo on the northeast coast of the bay, is also heavily industrialized. Tokyo (Japanese: Tokyo), meaning Eastern Capital, was the name given to the city of Edo when the seat of the imperial family was moved there from Kyoto (Capital City) in 1868. Additional reading R.P. Dore, City Life in Japan (1958, reissued 1973), is a sociological study of a district near the borderline between the plebeian Low City and the moneyed High City. Gary D. Allinson, Suburban Tokyo: A Comparative Study in Politics and Social Change (1979), is a similar study concerning the fringes of the metropolis. Peter Popham, Tokyo: The City at the End of the World (1985); and Paul Waley, Tokyo Now & Then (1984), are lively accounts that convey in ample measure the modern feel of the city. Katharine Sansom, Living in Tokyo (1936), performs the same service for an earlier day. Charles A. Beard, The Administration and Politics of Tokyo: A Survey and Opinions (1923), is a still-relevant survey of the governance of the city.The closest thing to an exhaustive history of the city from its origins down to the recent past is in Japanese: Tokyo hyakunen-shi, 7 vol. (197273), published by the prefectural office; the work of several hands, it is uneven but indispensable. Kato Yuzo (Yuzo Kato) (ed.), Yokohama, Past and Present (1990; originally published in Japanese, 1990), is interesting and helpful, if somewhat diffuse. Edward Seidensticker, Low City, High City (1983, reprinted 1991), is a cultural history of Tokyo from the Meiji Restoration of 186768 to the great earthquake of 1923, and his Tokyo Rising (1990), takes the story from the earthquake to the date of publication. Edward G. Seidensticker