About Tokyo

Tokyo (; Japanese: 東京, Tōkyō, [toːkʲoː] (listen)), officially the Tokyo Metropolis (東京都, Tōkyō-to), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area (spanning 13,452 square kilometres or 5,194 square miles) is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 million residents as of 2018; the city proper has a population of 13.99 million people. Located at the head of Tokyo Bay, the prefecture forms part of the Kantō region on the central coast of Honshu, Japan's largest island. Tokyo serves as Japan's economic center and is the seat of both the Japanese government and the Emperor of Japan. Originally a fishing village named Edo, the city became a prominent political centre in 1603, when it became the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate.