Website van de week - Site de la semaine - Website of the week

Old Tokyo

The overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the restoration of Imperial rule in 1868 led to the rapid modernization and Westernization of Japan. Edo had been the administrative center of the Shogun [General]; renamed Tokyo [East capital] by the young Emperor Meiji, the city would from here on out serve as Japan's new national, and Imperial, capital. The revolution that ended a 250-year old status quo signaled an end to Japan's self-imposed isolation as a feudal backwater and the beginning of an unprecedented and rapid industrial, political, and cultural transformation into a modern world state and world power.

In this headlong rush toward modernization, Tokyo led the way. For the foreign expatriate, the city represented a modern landscape, outwardly Western in appearance, of trading opportunities and exploitations. For the typical Tokyo-ite, and any out-country Japanese visiting the new capital, it was metropolis wonderland of many marvelous and wonderful new creations and adapted ideas.

Tokyo was a city of over a million during the latter Tokugawa period. There was initially a decline in the population of the new capital due primarily to daimyo [Provincial lords] no longer being required to keep family members and retainers there as virtual hostages of the Shogun. An 1877 census, the first taken by the Meiji government, found Tokyo's population to be only 583,300 persons. That number more than doubled within a decade. By 1941, on the eve of the Pacific War, the population had grown to more than 6 million people, making it the third most populated city in the world.

When first organized in 1869 Tokyo City comprised 15 ku [Ward, similar to a New York City borough]: Fukugawa, Honjo, Asakusa, Sotoshiro, Kanda, Nihonbashi, Kyobashi, Shitaya, Hongo, Koishikawa, Ushigome, Yotsuya, Akasaka, Azabu, and Shiba. The feudal han [Domain] system was abolished in 1878 with the establishment of Tokyo Prefecture [Tokyo-ken], comprised of Tokyo City and five suburban districts. In 1893 Tokyo-ken was expanded to include four new counties [gun] west of the city including the three Tama Districts.

Tokyo City, ca. 1932, after 20 new ku were added to the city's original 15 wards. A decade later, the 35 wards would be consolidated down to the present-day 23.In 1932, the metropolitan Greater Tokyo was established with the incorporation of 82 additional rural and suburban towns and villages, including the old suburban post towns of Shinagawa, Shinjuku, Shibuya and Meguro, into the original Tokyo-ken. The ku within the city-proper also increased then from 15 to 35. Greater Tokyo, in 1943, was reconstituted into the now-familiar Tokyo-to [Tokyo metropolis] with the formal political merger of Tokyo City into Tokyo Prefecture, at which time the number of city wards was reduced to the current 23 ku. Present-day Tokyo-to is made up of 23 wards, 26 cities, and 5 districts/sub-prefectures that stretch west from Tokyo Bay to the foothills of the Japan Alps.

Tokyo today bears little resemblance to the city it was 100 years ago. Fire, earthquakes and war have done little to dampen the city's spirit but have resulted in great changes to its urban landscape. Now a metropolis of steel and glass skyscrapers (and acres of dour gray ferro-concrete), little remains of the city that welcomed in the 20th century as a young, vibrant capital experimenting with new forms, fusions and shapes of urban architecture amidst a rush of profound social change.

Fire has always presented a danger to Japan's urban centers. Feudal Edo was poetically known for its Edo no hana [Edo flowers], and the fire danger was not entirely removed in the modern era even with the widespread use of brick and concrete building materials. Many of Tokyo's oldest, most historic buildings were lost in two cataclysmic events: the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake and fire-bombings of the city during the final months of the Pacific War in 1945.

Before those raptures, Meiji-era Tokyo was awash in eclectic waves of architectural styles spanning East and West. Able students of the foreign architects and urban planners invited to Japan immediately after the Restoration created a most modern city. There were showplace boulevards, such as Ginza, portraying Tokyo in the same modern light as New York or London or Paris (while only blocks away the teeming masses worked in, cavorted about, and were sheltered by the more traditional Japanese building materials of wood and paper). Timber gave way to iron and steel; brick-paved avenues replaced dirt streets and covered open canals; Western-style manufacturing, trade and consumerism were embraced alongside the traditions associated with Japan's Buddhist and Shinto beliefs, and the country's 2000 years of history.

Website: http://www.oldtokyo.com/index.html