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Adjective: Tokyoite
Short form: Kei (京)

Tokyo (From Wikipedia)
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Tokyo (東京都, Tōkyō-to), literally "eastern capital", is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan and includes the highly urbanized downtown area formerly known as the city of Tokyo which is the heart of the Greater Tokyo Area. Although not a single city, it is considered the capital of Japan since it is home to the Japanese government and emperor. About 12 million people, 10 percent of the country's population, live in Tokyo, while approximately 25 million people live in the entire Tokyo conurbation, making it effectively part of the most populated urban area on earth.

Tokyo is located in the Kanto region on the island of Honshu. Its center is at 35°41' North, 139°46' East (35.68333, 139.7667), but its borders extend to outlying islands in the Pacific Ocean, some as far as 1,000 km south of the mainland.

As the nation's center of politics, business, finance, education, mass media, and pop culture, Tokyo has Japan's highest concentration of corporate headquarters, financial institutions, universities and colleges, museums, theaters, and shopping and entertainment establishments. Tokyo is widely considered to be one of the world's major "global cities".

History

Tokyo's rise to prominence can be largely attributed to two men: Tokugawa Ieyasu and Emperor Meiji. In 1603, after unifying the warring states of Japan, Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu made Edo (now Tokyo) his base of operations. As a result, the city developed rapidly and grew to become one of the largest cities in the world with a population topping 1 million by the 18th century. It became the de facto capital of Japan even while the emperor resided in Kyoto, the imperial capital.

After 250 years, the shogunate was overthrown under the banner of restoring imperial rule. In 1869, the figurehead 17-year-old Emperor Meiji moved to Edo, which was renamed "Tokyo". Tokyo was already the nation's political, economic, and cultural center, and the emperor's residence made it a de facto imperial capital as well with the former Edo Castle becoming the Imperial Palace.

Tokyo went on to suffer two major catastrophes and has remarkably recovered from both of them. One was the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, and the other was World War II. The firebombings in 1945 were almost as devastating as the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Large areas of the city were flattened. Today, hardly a trace of the war is evident to visitors to the city, but many people still carry its emotional scars.

After the war, Tokyo was rebuilt with excellent train and subway systems, which were showcased to the world during the city's 1964 Summer Olympics. Tokyo became the largest city in the world in 1965 (taking the lead from New York) and has remained so until now. The 1970s brought new high-rise developments, a new and controversial airport at Narita (1978), and a population increase to about 11 million (in the metropolitan area). In the 1980s, real estate prices skyrocketed during an economic bubble: many got rich quick, but the bubble burst in the early 1990s and many companies, banks, and individuals were caught with real estate shrinking in value. A major recession followed, making the 1990s Japan's "lost decade" which still continues today.

Tokyo still sees new or renewed urban centers being developed on large lots of idle land. Recent projects include Ebisu Garden Place, Tennozu Isle, Shiodome, Roppongi Hills, Shinagawa (now also a shinkansen station), and Tokyo Station (Marunouchi side). Land reclamation projects in Tokyo have also been going on for centuries. The most prominent is the Odaiba area, now a major shopping and entertainment center.

Tokyo has been hit by powerful earthquakes in 1703, 1782, 1812, 1855 and 1923. The 1923 earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 8.3 killed 142,000 people.

There have been various plans proposed for transferring national government functions from Tokyo to secondary capitals in other regions of Japan, in order to slow down rapid development in Tokyo and revitalize economically lagging areas of the country. These plans have been controversial within Japan and have yet to be realized.

Due to evolution in the method in which Japanese letters are transliterated into their roman representation, older texts may refer to the city as "Tokio".