Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Although Tokyo's founding date is usually given as 1457, the year when
Ōta Dōkan, a minor lord, built his modest castle on a bluff overlooking the
Sumida-gawa, there have been people living on the Kantō plain since the
Paleolithic period. Today's restless metropolis began life as a humble fishing
village called Edo, meaning “river gate”, a name granted in the twelfth
century by Edo Shigenaga, a member of the Taira clan that held control of
the Kantō district at the time.
The beginnings
The earliest archeological finds from the Tokyo area date back to the late Paleolithic
period; the stone tools of ancient
hunter-gatherers
, who are believed to have arrived in
Japan from Polynesia and mainland Asia, have been found at various sites to the west of
today's city centre. The rationale behind their settling on the Kantō plain is clear, for it
was, and remains, a strategically important spot at the nexus of sea, river and land routes.
The centre of today's Tokyo, however, was under water for much of this time; as the land
slowly rose due to tectonic shifts, the waters fell back, providing a boon to the Tokyoites
of the time, since the resultant marshland provided an excellent source of food.
During the
Jōmon period
(10,000-3000 BC), the pottery for which Japan is now
famed started to be produced in significant quantities, often employing distinctive
“rope-cord” patterning. More elaborate techniques began to be used in the
Yayoi period
(300 BC-300 AD), when there were also major advances in wet-rice cultivation and
the use of bronze and iron implements. Given the city's modern-day renown in the
pottery field, it may come as a surprise to learn that Tokyo was actually nearer the end
of the talent line: most advances can be sourced to China, from where they slowly
trickled to western Japan (often via Korea), and then finally on to Tokyo and the north.
The same can be said for Buddhism, which arrived from Sabi (now Buyeo),
contemporary capital of the Korean kingdom of Baekje, around the mid-sixth century
AD; and
kanji
, the Chinese characters that remain a hugely important component of
Japan's writing system today.
Early dynasties
Tokyo was a mere bit-part player in Japan's early dynastic days. The
Soga clan
(592-645),
based out west around Nara, were the first of Japan's non-imperial ruling dynasties;
Asakusa's Sensō-ji temple, apparently built in 628 after local fishermen found a golden
bodhisattva statue in their nets, was likely founded during these times. In 645 the
Nakatomi clan
staged a successful coup against the Soga; within the next year they had
reorganized their nascent dynasty along a Tang Chinese system of land tenure and taxation
(known as the Taika, or “great reforms”), with the area on which Tokyo now sits becoming
10,000-3000 BC
628 AD
645
Creation of earliest known
pottery
Asakusa's Sensō-ji temple
constructed
Nakatomi clan depose Soga in
coup, and reform land tenure and
taxation
