In fact, there is no road on the ground, and the more people walk, the more it becomes a road. --Lu Xun
In fact, all this goes back more than 900 years, when Tokyo was just a very desolate small fishing village, and people lived on fishing in the sea, which was neither called "Edo" nor "Tokyo" at that time, and was called "Chiyoda" at that time.
The desire for this name may be somewhat similar to that of Qin Shi Huang.
"Become the First Emperor." The afterlife is counted, and the second and third generations are passed on to all generations. The aborigines here do not have such a great "ambition", only "Chiyo's farming and fishing".
Today, however, there is a central area in downtown Tokyo called Chiyoda Ward, which commemorates this small fishing village that first originated in the Tokyo area. This Chiyoda Ward is the top district in Tokyo's 23 wards in terms of per capita income, and I personally feel that it is not an exaggeration to match the word "Chiyo".
It's Tokyo of Tokyo!
However, in the 12th century, a Hao clan named Edo clan directly occupied this place, built a castle belonging to their own Hao clan, turned this small fishing village into a market town, and directly promoted the development of this place, and the most important point is to name this place after its own clan name "Edo".
"Edo, Edo, Gateway to the River", it just so happens that the sumina and Arakawa rivers flow through here into tokyo bay, so the clan name and the geographical environment have reached a clever unity, just right.
In 1457, a military general named Ota Michikan ordered the gathering of migrant workers to build Edo Castle, which was also an important step in the development of the market town into a town, and the size of the city was further expanded.
It should be noted here that the Kanto region at this time was far from being comparable to the cities of Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka in Kansai, and that the Kanto at that time was still a "barbaric land" in the eyes of Kansai people, but the scale of "Edo Castle" had become a representative of this "barbaric land" at that time.
In 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu first met the Buddha-figure of "Edo Castle", in addition to the prosperity of Edo Castle, the outside of the castle is really a deserted beach, although "Edo" has the saying "Gateway to the River", but some people think that the Japanese pronunciation of the word "Edo" is the same as the Japanese word "Dirty Earth", perhaps this is also one of the reasons for the name "Edo"?
Then, from 1603 to 1867, for more than two hundred years, Edo was the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate government and the political center of Japan, and the Tokugawa shogunate held real power and spent two hundred years to further expand the size of Edo and turn Edo into a megacity with a population of more than one million at that time.
The first to consider renaming "Edo" to "Tokyo" was Sato Nobuchi, an early advocate of Japan's Westernization, whose ideas even influenced the thinking of an entire generation of Japan at the time, once wrote: "If Japan is to stand among the nations of the world, Tokyo in Edo, Nishikyo in Osaka, and Kyoto are indispensable." ”
Influenced by it, Okubo Ritsuru renamed Edo to Tokyo in 1867.
In 1868, the Tokugawa shogunate government was overthrown, and the Meiji Restoration was realized throughout Japan from top to bottom, and Emperor Meiji ordered the capital to be moved from Kyoto to Tokyo.
However, Emperor Meiji's edict changing Edo's name to Tokyo was issued on July 7, 1868, and on October 30 of the same year, Emperor Meiji officially entered Tokyo with imperial personnel.
In 1871, The Prefecture of Tokyo was established, in 1889 the City of Tokyo was formally formed by fifteen wards, and in 1943, the Japanese government changed the city of Tokyo to the Prefecture of Tokyo, expanding the jurisdiction of the Tokyo Prefecture to the current twenty-three wards, which has not changed to this day.
Knowing the origin of "Edo" and "Tokyo", how did some of the seemingly obscure place names in Tokyo come about? This time, we will focus on the two places of "Shinjuku" and "Akihabara", so please take a look at it with Monogatari Jun!
The origin of the name Shinjuku
Previously, Monogatari Jun had written an article "Shinjuku Station, No Exit", which was about the super-developed Shinjuku Station with more than two hundred exits, which was almost dizzying, so Shinjuku Station can be said to be the "super hub" station of Tokyo.
However, in ancient times, Shinjuku's status was no less than it is now, and "Shinjuku" is actually an acronym that is expanded in Japanese as "新しい宿堂 (新驿站)".
Shinjuku in the Edo period
Would you wonder, is the name so simple? New coaching inn? If there is no old caravanserai, you can guess right!
During the Edo period, five avenues were distributed in all directions of Japan, centered on the NihonBashi, and the name was called "Five Streets", which you can understand as the current "Expressway".
(ps: here I have to complain about tianjin's "five avenues", this name can not be a good dim sum? Is it almost the same as this "five streets"? ）
There are Tokaido in the direction of Nagoya, Nikko Road towards Nikko Toshogu Shrine, Oshu Road to the northeast, Nakasen-do in the direction of Gunma and Nagano, and Koshu-do, which departs from Hachioji and intersects with Nakayama-do in Kami-sumito.
Of course, there are highways and service areas, and there are streets with stations, which are roughly functionally similar, and the stations at that time mainly provided storage of goods, rest and mailing services.
However, the establishment of Shinjuku is related to the people who travel to and from Koshu Province, the starting point of Koshu Road is in Nihonbashi, but the nearest station to him is actually eighteen kilometers away from "Takaito", if there are many goods, it is quite difficult to transport goods in the flesh.
Takamatsu Kibei was the first to stand up, hoping to build a new post station between Nipponbashi and Takaido.
However, if he wanted to build a new post, it was not impossible, he had to give the shogunate a sum of money, and he finally paid a huge amount of money equivalent to more than 12 million yuan now, and the shogunate let him build "Shinjuku", a name that has been used since then.
But if you think about it, Takamatsu Kibei is really rich enough, do the people of Shinjuku remember him now?
Origin of the name Akihabara
Speaking of Akihabara in Taito District, it must have attracted the attention of many otaku and electrical appliance masters, and this place will produce a variety of "subcultures" every year, attracting the attention of the whole world.
However, the image of "Akihabara" is now completely different from when the name was first established, and it has not been as consistent as "Shinjuku".
During the Edo period, there were frequent fires in this area because the wooden buildings were too dense, and there were several influential fires before and after.
However, the new officials took office with three fires, and shortly after Emperor Meiji arrived in Tokyo, a raging fire in the area made Emperor Meiji determined to push the government to solve the matter.
The government has carved out an "open space" as a buffer zone for fires, and if another fire breaks out, it will not spread to other areas of Tokyo, so the word "hara" in "Akihabara" comes from this.
After all! Although Emperor Meiji was bent on learning from the West, in that obscure era, The Empress Meiji had no doubt about Shinto, and she did not think that the frequent fires in this area were a problem of the construction of the place itself, and he felt the need to build a shrine in this place, and the main purpose of the shrine was to enshrine the "fire god", "Autumn Leaf Great Power".
It is also called "Akiha shrine", so over time, this place has been called "Akihabara".
Not long after, in 1890, the "Akiha Shrine" was moved, the original site of the shrine was built a railway station, and the modernization process continued to intensify, and many people in modern times live in the "reinforced concrete" of Akihabara, and it is not strange that they do not know the origin of the name.
What more do you know about the origin of Japanese place names, so please feel free to respond!
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