Tokyo can very easily be overwhelming. It's associated with a handful of superlatives, like “the
most populous city in the world”, “home to the busiest train station”
or “the busiest street crossing”. The Tokyo of today
is the result of centuries of development and the combination
of a bunch of settlements. So I want to focus in on the foundation
of where all this began. Let's take just a second to get oriented. The city sits right here on the eastern
coast of Japan, next to Tokyo Bay. Zooming out a bit, you can see it lies along the Pacific
Rim in what's known as the ‘Ring of Fire’. This is the edge of a tectonic plate,
and it's along this rim where 80% of the world's
seismic activity and 75% of the world's volcanic activity occurs,
both of which characterize Japan. Due to the earthquakes and volcanoes,
three fourths of Japan is mountainous. However, the basin that Tokyo sits in
is unusually flat. In my mind, it was inevitable that
this spot would be home to a major city. Another important element of understanding
the city is its water. There are four major rivers that run down from the mountains
through the city and empty into the bay. The combination of these
and the topography of the city make it very prone to flooding. This, plus a devastating
bombing during World War Two means that it can be hard
to find old buildings in downtown Tokyo. But what does remain
is much of the original street layout. This is a topographical map of Tokyo. If I zoom in, you can see these unnatural waterways
that are part of the current city. These were built hundreds of years ago
to serve as a moat for a castle that stood here, Edo Castle. Today, the Imperial Palace
stands on these grounds and the surrounding greenery is a great anchor point
when looking at a current map of the city. The year 1603 marks
the beginning of the Edo period when a new ruler came into power
and moved the military capital of Japan from Kyoto to Edo,
which is modern day Tokyo. Okay, before
we get to deep into these maps of Tokyo, I want to thank Surfshark
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at the top of the description and we will hop into our video
about Tokyo. In videos I've made of other cities, there's often
a clear pattern to the street layout. In New York, for example,
there was the 1811 commissioner's plan that laid the city out in the clean grid
of streets and avenues in San Francisco. I talked about how the streets are named
after states in alphabetical order, but Tokyo is much more complex
and irregular than most western cities. There are portions like this
that are pretty close to a grid system,
but other parts are completely irregular. And not only do many of these streets lack a pattern, but more often than not,
they also lack a name. As someone mostly familiar
with Western cities, this blew my mind. But it doesn't mean there isn't a reason and a method behind the streets
and their addresses. Let me explain. Until about 150 years ago,
Japan had a very clear caste system, and this social structure
had a large influence on where people lived
and how each neighborhood functioned. If you lived in a lower caste
as a commoner, you would live in much more tightly packed neighborhoods
that resulted in something closer to a grid system like this area
right here. If you were in the military,
you would have lived closer to the Shogun
and you would have more land. And if you were a lower level samurai,
you would live east of the Shogun. Since East is viewed
as the unlucky direction in feng shui. And something else becomes
a lot more clear when we overlay the topographical map,
you can see that this same neighborhood is in this green blue area,
meaning it's lower in elevation. A lot of the area that sort of light blue
was actually still water back in the 16th century
when it was first being developed. And so you really had the castle
kind of on the edges of Tokyo Bay. This is Michael Thornton,
who's an assistant professor of history
at Northeastern University. Is that an original?
That's the original map. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's awesome. And help me understand
a little bit of how this works. Tokyo can be divided into the high city
and the low city on the top of the hills. These red areas, buildings are less
vulnerable to floods and earthquakes. So this is where
people of higher class built. Then as the city grew,
the lower places filled in with commoners. All these areas over here
that are above the sea level are the poorest districts of Tokyo
in 2023. These moats visible on
both old maps of Edo and current maps of Tokyo are another example of how
the city was different from the start. Rather than a strong city wall,
this acted as the main defense. Having a big grid with open wide avenues
is not great for defending the place. There was never really any wall building. Instead, it's
kind of the confusing street system and all the moats
and this sort of interlocking pattern. Those were used as the defensive
mechanisms rather than the wall. Portions of it have been covered by roads, but if you know what to look for
when you're walking around in the area, you can actually find stones
from the original moat. Some of them have plaques
that talk a little bit more about it. And I found this YouTube video of this guy
that walks all over Tokyo and just shows stuff like this. So you should check out his channel,
It's really cool. In fact, Sotobori-Dori, right here, means ‘outer moat avenue’
and this neighborhood. Marunouchi, means ‘within the circle’. These are some of the many elements
of this old Edo that still surface in modern day
Tokyo. As Edo was built,
so was a network of five long roads stretching across
much of Japan, called Gaokaido, that connected the country as it unified
for the first time in centuries. These five roads all merged
right here at Nihonbashi Bridge. Most of the original roads are gone,
along with the original wooden bridge. But today, a bridge by the same name
still stands in this place and serves as the point that all places in Japan are measured from. Because of its position on the bay
and the moats around the city that could be utilized for transport,
it really was more a place of commerce
than it ever was for defense. While Edo was never really attacked
by outsiders, it didn't avoid large scale destruction. In 1657, a huge fire
burned through most of the city. At the time, the residents were required
to live within the moat boundary, so it was tightly packed and over
100,000 people died. This fire had a huge impact on the city. The Shogun allowed the residents
to begin to spread out to the other side of the moat,
beginning an expansion that wouldn't stop
for hundreds of more years. Also, just a quick side note. Almost every video I've made, a massive
city wide fire has played a role. Chicago, New York, San Francisco. I was also in Lisbon last summer,
and a bunch of the buildings have these like fireproof walls
that are really important there. It just makes me think a lot about fire
policies. Fire escapes were implemented,
building materials. Anyway, back to Edo. Unfortunately, this was not
the only destruction to strike the city. It continued to expand by building,
but also by incorporating nearby settlements, which added
to the randomness of the roads. In 1923, a 7.9 earthquake
devastatingly shook the entire city. And more than just the shaking, the fire
that followed once again leveled the city. A few decades later
most of the buildings were destroyed again by US bombing during World War Two. When you look for information about Tokyo, you'll quickly
find things about the metro system. About World War Two, the postwar miracle,
and the hosting of the Olympics. But the small foundation
and ancient social structure of this sprawling metropolis
still pulls weight in where people live in the city
and how it's organized. Thank you guys
so much for watching this video. We have an entire guide to Tokyo
on BrightTrip.com where we talk all about how ramen is made, how you can order
sushi, how to travel there with kids. The nightlife,
the shopping, public transportation. Tons of info over there.
We'll see you a brighttrip.com. I also left a bunch of links in the description for resources
I used for making this video that I highly recommend
checking out as well as the Surfshark 83% off and three months free link. So that's all under the like button and
we'll see you in the next video very soon. Peace.
