Why go
The change from Edo to Tokyo marks more than a new label: it reflects the city’s shift from shogunal headquarters to imperial and national capital. Recognizing both names helps travelers read museum labels, historic maps, castle references, and district stories across the city.
The full story
Etymology Tokyo was originally known as Edo , which means "estuary". Its name was changed to Tokyo (東京 Tōkyō; 東 tō "east", and 京 kyō "capital") when it became the imperial capital with the arrival of Emperor Meiji in 1868, in line with the East Asian tradition of including the word capital (京) in the name of the capital city. During the early Meiji period, the city was also called "Tōkei", an alternative pronunciation for the same Chinese characters representing "Tokyo", making it a kanji homograph. Some surviving official English documents use the spelling "Tokei". However, this pronunciation is now obsolete. The name Tokyo was first suggested in 1813 in the book Kondō Hisaku (Secret Plan of Commingling), written by Satō Nobuhiro. When Ōkubo Toshimichi proposed the renaming to the government during the Meiji Restoration, according to Oda Kanshi (織田完之), he got the idea from that book.