Tokyo, the capital no law names

Two cities

Kyoto was laid out in 794 for the emperor Kammu, on the model of the Chinese capital Chang’an, and it was the capital of Japan for more than a thousand years. Its name literally means “capital city”.^[2]

Real power, though, moved east. In 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu set up his shogunate in the town of Edo, and by the mid-18th century Edo had more than a million people. The emperor stayed in Kyoto, which remained the formal capital.^[6]

The eastern capital

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ended the shogunate and restored rule by the emperor.^[6] That July, Edo was renamed Tokyo, and in October the emperor finished his journey from Kyoto and moved into Edo Castle, renamed Tokyo Castle.^[3] Tokyo means “eastern capital”.^[1] After the move, Kyoto became known as Saikyō, the “western capital”.^[2]

The emperor went back to Kyoto for a while, but returned to Tokyo in March 1869, which the Tokyo Metropolitan Library counts as the real move of the national capital.^[3] Tokyo’s own government puts it simply: the emperor moved to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo, and so Tokyo became the capital.^[6]

No law says so

Japan has no law that names its capital.^[7] One came close. The Capital Construction Act of 1950 set out to build Tokyo “as the capital of our new, peaceful nation”, but it was repealed in 1956. The law that replaced it, the Metropolitan Area Readjustment Act, defines a “capital region” as Tokyo and the surrounding areas set by cabinet order, without saying where the capital is.^[4]

On 2 February 2018 a member of the House of Representatives, Seiji Osaka, asked the government in writing whether any law made Tokyo the capital, and whether it should pass one before the 2020 Olympics.^[4] He noted a strong view that the 1868 imperial rescript renaming Edo, by giving it the character kyō, “capital”, had made Tokyo a capital alongside Kyoto.^[4]

The cabinet of Shinzō Abe answered on 13 February. No law directly states that the capital is Tokyo, it said, but Tokyo being Japan’s capital is widely accepted by society.^[5] The Legislative Bureau of the House of Councillors makes the same point: Tokyo has the ministries, the Diet and the Supreme Court, so it meets the dictionary definition of a capital, and perhaps no law was ever thought necessary.^[7]

“No law directly provides that the capital is Tokyo, but we consider that Tokyo being the capital of Japan is widely accepted by society in general.”^[5]