Edo

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This article is about the former city name of Tokyo. For the Nigerian state or language, see Edo State or Edo language. For the US military contractor see EDO Corporation

Edo (Japanese: 江戸, literally: bay-door, "estuary", pronounced /edo/), once also spelled Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capitol Tokyo. While there had been early settlements on the hills at Tokyo Bay for several centuries, the first major event in the history of Edo was the building of the Edo Castle in 1457 by Ōta Dōkan.

Panorama of Edo, 1865 or 1866. Photograph by Felice Beato.

The Tokugawa shogunate was established in 1603 with Edo as its seat of government (de facto capitol), which fueled its growth from a small virtually unknown fishing village in 1457, and grew to 680,000 residents by 1700, one of the five largest cities in the world at the time. Despite repeated natural disasters, the city continued to grow. The emperor's residence and formal capitol remained in Kyoto, which had been the actual capitol of Japan until that time.

Edo was devastated repeatedly by fires, the Meireki no Taika of 1657 perhaps having been the most serious one: an estimated 100,000 people perished in the flames. During the Edo period, there were about one hundred fires, typically caused by accidents when the mostly wooden townhouses (Machiya) were heated with charcoal fires in winter. The city was levelled repeatedly about every 25-50 years from 1600 to 1945, by all consuming fires, powerful earthquakes, tsunami, volcanic eruptions, and war.

In 1868, when the shogunate came to an end, the city was renamed "Tokyo" which means "Eastern Capital"; during the restoration, the emperor moved to Tokyo, making the city the formal as well as de facto capital of Japan.

During the Edo period, the Shogunate appointed administrators (machi bugyo) to oversee the government of Edo. They oversaw the police and (from the time of Yoshimune onward) the commoner fire department (machibikeshi), heard criminal and civil suits, and performed other administrative functions necessary in a city of a million inhabitants.

Additionally, Edo is the name of a brand of chocolate biscuit sticks.