Japan in the context of Kanazawa

A capital city, or just capital, is the municipality holding primary status in a country, state, province, department, or other subnational division, usually as its seat of government. A capital is typically a city that physically encompasses the government's offices and meeting places; the status as capital is often designated by law or a constitution. In some jurisdictions, including several countries, different branches of government are in different settlements, sometimes meaning there are multiple official capitals. In some cases, a distinction is made between the official (constitutional) capital and the seat of government.

English-language media often use the name of the capital metonymically to refer to the government sitting there. Thus, "London–Washington relations" is understood to mean diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the United States.

Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital and most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is one of the most populous urban areas in the world. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes Tokyo and parts of six neighboring prefectures, is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with 41 million residents as of 2024.

Lying at the head of Tokyo Bay, Tokyo is part of the Kantō region, on the central coast of Honshu, Japan's largest island. It is Japan's economic center and the seat of the Japanese government and the Emperor of Japan. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government administers Tokyo's central 23 special wards, which formerly made up Tokyo City; various commuter towns and suburbs in its western area; and two outlying island chains, the Tokyo Islands. Although most of the world recognizes Tokyo as a city, since 1943 its governing structure has been more akin to that of a prefecture, with an accompanying Governor and Assembly taking precedence over the smaller municipal governments that make up the metropolis. Special wards in Tokyo include Chiyoda, the site of the National Diet Building and the Tokyo Imperial Palace; Shinjuku, the city's administrative center; and Shibuya, a hub of commerce and business.

The capital of Japan is Tokyo. Throughout history, the national capital of Japan has been in locations other than Tokyo. The oldest capital is Nara.

This is a list of cities in Japan sorted by prefecture and within prefecture by founding date. The list is also sortable by population, area, density and foundation date. Most large cities in Japan are cities designated by government ordinance. Some regionally important cities are designated as core cities. Tokyo is not included on this list, as the City of Tokyo ceased to exist on July 1, 1943. Tokyo now exists as a special metropolis prefecture (都, to), with 23 special wards (with the same status of city) making up the former boundaries of the former city in the eastern half of the prefecture.

The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, consisting of the Kantō region of Japan (including Tokyo Metropolis and the prefectures of Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Tochigi) as well as the prefecture of Yamanashi of the neighboring Chūbu region. In Japanese, it is referred to by various terms, one of the most common being Capital Region (首都圏, Shuto-ken).

As of 2016, the United Nations estimates the total population at 38,140,000. It covers an area of approximately 13,500 km (5,200 mi), giving it a population density of 2,642 people/km. It is the second-largest single metropolitan area in the world in terms of built-up or urban function landmass at 8,547 km (3,300 mi), behind only the New York City metropolitan area at 11,642 km (4,495 mi). With over US$2 trillion in GDP, Tokyo remains the second-largest metropolitan economy in the world, also behind New York.

Japan is divided into 47 prefectures (都道府県, todōfuken, [todoːɸɯ̥ꜜkeɴ] ), which rank immediately below the national government and form the country's first level of jurisdiction and administrative division. They include 43 prefectures proper (県, ken), two urban prefectures (府, fu: Osaka and Kyoto), one regional prefecture (道, dō: Hokkaidō) and one metropolis (都, to: Tokyo). In 1868, the Meiji Fuhanken sanchisei administration created the first prefectures (urban fu and rural ken) to replace the urban and rural administrators (bugyō, daikan, etc.) in the parts of the country previously controlled directly by the shogunate and a few territories of rebels/shogunate loyalists who had not submitted to the new government such as Aizu/Wakamatsu. In 1871, all remaining feudal domains (han) were also transformed into prefectures, so that prefectures subdivided the whole country. In several waves of territorial consolidation, today's 47 prefectures were formed by the turn of the century. In many instances, these are contiguous with the ancient ritsuryō provinces of Japan.

Each prefecture's chief executive is a directly elected governor (知事, chiji). Ordinances and budgets are enacted by a unicameral assembly (議会, gikai) whose members are elected for four-year terms.

Tokyo Bay (東京湾, Tōkyō-wan) is a bay located in the southern Kantō region of Japan spanning the coasts of Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture, and Chiba Prefecture, on the southern coast of the island of Honshu. Tokyo Bay is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Uraga Channel. The Tokyo Bay region is the most populous and the largest industrialized area in Japan.

The Kantō region (関東地方, Kantō Chihō; IPA: [kaꜜn.toː, kan.toː tɕiꜜ.hoː, kan.toː tɕi̥.hoꜜː]) is a geographical region of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Saitama, Tochigi, and Tokyo. Slightly more than 45 percent of the land area within its boundaries is the Kantō Plain. The rest consists of the hills and mountains that form land borders with other regions of Japan.

As the Kantō region contains Tokyo, the capital and largest city of Japan, the region is considered the center of Japan's politics and economy. According to the official census on October 1, 2010, by the Statistics Bureau of Japan, the population was 42,607,376, amounting to approximately one third of the total population of Japan.

The Government of Japan is the central government of Japan. It consists of legislative, executive and judiciary branches and functions under the framework established by the Constitution of Japan. Japan is a unitary state, containing forty-seven administrative divisions, with the emperor as its head of state. His role is ceremonial and he has no powers related to the Government. Instead, it is the Cabinet, comprising the prime minister and the ministers of state, that directs and controls the government and the civil service. The Cabinet has the executive power and is formed by the prime minister, who is the head of government. The Prime Minister is nominated by the National Diet and appointed to office by the Emperor. The current cabinet is the Takaichi Cabinet, which is led by prime minister Sanae Takaichi, who assumed office on 21 October 2025. The country has had a Liberal Democratic minority government since 2025.

The National Diet is the legislature, the organ of the Legislative branch. The Diet is bicameral, consisting of two houses with the House of Councilors being the upper house, and the House of Representatives being the lower house. The members of both houses of the Diet are directly elected by the people, who are the source of sovereignty. The Diet is defined as the supreme organ of sovereignty in the Constitution. The Supreme Court and other lower courts make up the Judicial branch and have all the judicial powers in the state. The Supreme Court has ultimate judicial authority to interpret the constitution and the power of judicial review. The judicial branch is independent from the executive and the legislative branches. Judges are nominated or appointed by the Cabinet and never removed by the executive or the legislature except during impeachment.

The emperor of Japan is the hereditary monarch and head of state of Japan. The emperor is defined by the Constitution of Japan as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, his position deriving from "the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power". The Imperial Household Law governs the line of imperial succession. Pursuant to his constitutional role as a national symbol, and in accordance with rulings by the Supreme Court of Japan, the emperor is personally immune from prosecution. By virtue of his position as the head of the Imperial House, the emperor is also recognized as the head of the Shinto religion, which holds him to be the direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. According to tradition, the office of emperor was created in the 7th century BC, but the first historically verifiable emperors appear around the 5th or 6th centuries AD.

The role of the emperor of Japan has historically alternated between a largely ceremonial symbolic role and that of an actual imperial ruler. Since the establishment of the first shogunate in 1192, the emperors of Japan have rarely taken on a role as supreme battlefield commander, unlike many Western monarchs. Japanese emperors have nearly always been controlled by external political forces, to varying degrees. Between 1192 and 1867, the shōguns, or their shikken regents in Kamakura (1203–1333), were the de facto rulers of Japan, although they were nominally appointed by the emperor. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the emperor was the embodiment of all sovereign power in the realm, as enshrined in the Meiji Constitution of 1889. Since the enactment of the 1947 constitution, the role of emperor has been relegated to that of a ceremonial head of state without even nominal political powers. The emperor is the head of the Japanese honors system, conferring orders, decorations, medals, and awards in the name of the state and on behalf of its people in accordance with the advice of the Cabinet.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government (東京都庁, Tōkyōto-chō) is the government of the Tokyo Metropolis. One of the 47 prefectures of Japan, the government consists of a popularly elected governor and assembly. The headquarters building is located in the ward of Shinjuku. The metropolitan government administers the special wards, cities, towns and villages that constitute part of the Tokyo Metropolis. With a population closing in on 14 million living within its boundaries, and many more commuting from neighbouring prefectures, the metropolitan government wields significant political power within Japan.

East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are among the world's largest and most prosperous. East Asia borders North Asia to the north, Southeast Asia to the south, South Asia to the southwest, and Central Asia to the west. To its east is the Pacific Ocean.

East Asia, especially Chinese civilization, is regarded as one of the earliest cradles of civilization. Other ancient civilizations in East Asia that still exist as independent countries in the present day include the Japanese, Korean, and Mongolian civilizations. Various other civilizations existed as independent polities in East Asia in the past but have since been absorbed into neighbouring civilizations in the present day, such as Tibet, Manchuria, and Ryukyu (Okinawa), among many others. Taiwan has a relatively young history in the region after the prehistoric era; originally, it was a major site of Austronesian civilisation prior to colonisation by European colonial powers and China from the 17th century onward. For thousands of years, China was the leading civilization in the region, exerting influence on its neighbours. Historically, societies in East Asia have fallen within the Chinese sphere of influence, and East Asian vocabularies and scripts are often derived from Classical Chinese and Chinese script. The Chinese calendar serves as the root from which many other East Asian calendars are derived.

The Sea of Okhotsk is a marginal sea of the northwestern Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, Japan's island of Hokkaido on the south, the island of Sakhalin along the west, and a stretch of eastern Siberian coast along the west and north. Its northeast corner is the Shelikhov Gulf. The sea is named for the port of Okhotsk, itself named for the Okhota River.

The Japanese archipelago (Japanese: 日本列島, Hepburn: Nippon/Nihon Rettō; Japanese pronunciation: [ɲip.pon/ɲi.hon ɾeꜜt.toː]) is an archipelago of 14,125 islands that form the country of Japan. It extends over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) from the Sea of Okhotsk in the northeast to the East China and Philippine seas in the southwest along the Pacific coast of the Eurasian continent, and consists of three island arcs from north to south: the Northeastern Japan Arc, the Southwestern Japan Arc, and the Ryukyu Island Arc. The Daitō Islands, the Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc, and the Kuril Islands neighbor the archipelago.

Japan is the largest island country in East Asia and the fourth-largest island country in the world with 377,975.24 km (145,937.06 sq mi). It has an exclusive economic zone of 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi).

Japan is an island country of 14,125 islands, of which approximately 260 are inhabited. Japan is the third-largest island country in the world, behind Indonesia and Madagascar. Japan is also the second-most-populous island country in the world, only behind Indonesia.

According to a survey conducted by the Japan Coast Guard in 1987, the number of islands in Japan was 6,852. At that time, the survey only counted islands with coastlines of 100 meters or more that were shown on paper maps.On February 28, 2023, the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan announced that the number of islands had been updated to 14,125 through a recount using digital maps. Since there is no international standard for counting islands, only islands with a coastline of 100 meters or more were counted, as in the past. According to the GSI, advances in surveying technology and the detailed representation of topographic features through digital mapping contributed to this announcement.

Japan is often divided into regions, each containing one or more of the country's 47 prefectures at large. Sometimes, they are referred to as "blocs" (ブロック, burokku), or "regional blocs" (地域ブロック, chiiki burokku) as opposed to more granular regional divisions. They are not official administrative units, though they have been used by government officials for statistical and other purposes since 1905. They are widely used in, for example, maps, geography textbooks, and weather reports, and many businesses and institutions use their home regions in their names as well, for example Kyushu National Museum, Kinki Nippon Railway, Chūgoku Bank, and Tōhoku University.

One common division groups the prefectures into eight regions. In this arrangement, of the four main islands of Japan, Hokkaidō, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyūshū, each form their own region, with Kyūshū also including the Satsunan Islands. The largest island, Honshū, is split into five regions. Okinawa Prefecture is usually considered part of Kyūshū, but it is sometimes treated as its own ninth region.

Japan is an archipelagic country comprising a stratovolcanic archipelago over 3,000 km (1,900 mi) along the Pacific coast of East Asia. It consists of 14,125 islands. The five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Okinawa. The other 14,120 islands are classified as "remote islands" by the Japanese government. The Ryukyu Islands and Nanpō Islands are south and east of the main islands.

The territory covers 377,973.89 km (145,936.53 sq mi). It is the fourth-largest island country in the world and the largest island country in East Asia. The country has the 6th longest coastline at 29,751 km (18,486 mi) and the 8th largest Exclusive Economic Zone of 4,470,000 km (1,730,000 sq mi) in the world.

Samurai (侍) were members of the warrior class who served as retainers to lords in Japan prior to the Meiji era. Samurai existed from the late 12th century until their abolition in the late 1870s during the Meiji era. They were originally provincial warriors who served the Kuge and imperial court in the late 12th century.

In 1853, the United States forced Japan to open its borders to foreign trade under the threat of military action. Fearing an eventual invasion, the Japanese abandoned feudalism for capitalism so that they could industrialize and build a modern army. The adoption of modern firearms rendered the traditional weapons of the samurai obsolete, and as firearms are easy enough for peasant conscripts to learn, Japan had no more need for a specialized warrior caste. By 1876 the special rights and privileges of the samurai had all been abolished.

The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the Edo shogunate, was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868.

The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars of the Sengoku period following the collapse of the Ashikaga shogunate. Ieyasu became the shōgun, and the Tokugawa clan governed Japan from Edo Castle in the eastern city of Edo (Tokyo) along with the daimyō lords of the samurai class.