Located at the head of Tokyo Bay, Tokyo is part of the Kantō region on the central coast of Honshu, Japan's largest island. Tokyo serves as Japan's economic center and the seat of both the Japanese government and the Emperor of Japan. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government administers Tokyo's central 23 special wards (which formerly made up Tokyo City), various commuter towns and suburbs in its western area, and two outlying island chains known as the Tokyo Islands. Despite most of the world knowing Tokyo as a city, since 1943 its governing structure has been more akin to a prefecture, with an accompanying Governor and Assembly taking precedence over the smaller municipal governments which make up the metropolis.
Prior to the 17th century, Tokyo was predominantly a fishing village and was named Edo. In 1603, however, the city ascended to political prominence after being named the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. By the mid-18th century, Edo emerged as one of the world's most-populous cities with a population of over onemillion people. Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the imperial capital in Kyoto was moved to Edo, and the city was renamed Tokyo (lit.'Eastern Capital'). In 1923, Tokyo was damaged substantially by the Great Kantō earthquake, and the city was later badly damaged by allied bombing raids during World War II in retaliation for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Beginning in the mid-20th century, Tokyo underwent rapid reconstruction and expansion that contributed to the era's so-called Japanese economic miracle in which Japan's economy propelled to the second-largest in the world behind that of the United States. Tokyo is also part of an industrial region that spans from Yokohama and Kawasaki to Chiba. , the city is home to 29 of the world's largest 500 companies listed in the annual Fortune Global 500. (Full article...)
Zipair, legally Zipair Tokyo Inc. (株式会社 Zipair Tokyo, Kabushiki-gaisha Jippu-ea Tōkyō, styled ZIPAIR Tokyo), is a Japaneselow-cost airline headquartered on the grounds of Narita International Airport in Narita, Chiba. Initially founded in 2018, the airline is a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan Airlines, from which it leases some of its Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet. Operations launched on June 3, 2020 as a cargo-only airline due to restrictions on passenger traffic related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and passenger operations launched on October 16, 2020. (Full article...)
Image 19The five-story pagoda of Kan'ei-ji, which was constructed during the reign of Tokugawa Hidetada and required the building of the Kimon (Devil's Gate) (from History of Tokyo)
Image 20Commodore Matthew Perry's fleet during his second visit to Tokyo in 1854 (from History of Tokyo)
Image 37A leaflet dropped by the U.S. over Tokyo during the bombings, urging civilians to leave the city (from History of Tokyo)
Image 38Picture of the Upper Class, a c. 1794–1795 painting by Utamaro. The woman on the left is lower in class than the woman on the right, who wears more colorful clothes (from History of Tokyo)
Image 46A social hierarchy chart based on old academic theories. Such hierarchical diagrams were removed from Japanese textbooks after various studies in the 1990s revealed that peasants, craftsmen, and merchants were in fact equal and merely social categories. Successive shoguns held the highest or near-highest court ranks, higher than most court nobles. (from History of Tokyo)
Image 48A scene from the Tokugawa Seiseiroku, showing an aspect of the sankin kotai system: the festive attendance day of daimyo at Edo Castle (from History of Tokyo)
... that episodes of the TV Tokyo late-night show Nogizaka Under Construction are uploaded to YouTube shortly after broadcast, which is considered unusual in Japanese media?
... that Ralph Page once called a contra dance for more than 4000 people in Tokyo, despite not knowing Japanese?
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Portal:Tokyo, and is written by contributors.
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