The largest and capital city of Japan is Tokyo. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan region is the most populated in the world at 13,452 square kilometres or 5,194 square miles, with an estimated 37.468 million residents as of 2018; the city itself is home to 13,99 million people. Tokyo is the home of the Japanese government and the Emperor of Japan, and it also acts as the country's economic hub. The prefecture's 23 special wards (formerly known as Tokyo City), numerous commuter towns and suburbs in its western region, and the two distant island chains known as the Tokyo Islands have all been under the control of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government since 1943.
Tokyo is classified as an Alpha+ metropolis by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network and has the second-largest urban economy in the world by gross domestic product, behind New York City. As a part of an industrial zone that also includes the cities of Yokohama, Kawasaki, and Chiba, it serves as Japan's most important corporate hub. 37 Fortune Global 500 firms are based in Tokyo as of 2021. Only New York City, London, and Shanghai were ahead of the city in the Global Financial Centres Index for 2020. The Metropolitan Area Outer Subterranean Discharge Channel, the largest underground floodwater diversion system, and the tallest skyscraper in the world, the Tokyo Sky Tree, are both located in Tokyo (located in Kasukabe, Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo). Japanese Metro Ginza The first subterranean metro line in East Asia to open was the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line in 1927. Tokyo, one of the world's most livable cities, tied with Wellington for fourth place in the 2021 Global Livability Ranking.
Japan is one of the most urbanised, densely inhabited, and twelfth most populous countries in the world. The country's 123.2 million residents are primarily concentrated in its constrained coastal lowlands because around three-fourths of its land is hilly. There are eight traditional regions and 47 administrative prefectures in Japan. With more than 35.6 million inhabitants, the Greater Tokyo Area is the most populated metropolitan area in the world.
Although the Japanese archipelago has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic (30,000 BC), the first documented reference of it is found in a Chinese chronicle (the Book of Han), which was completed in the second century AD. Japan's kingdoms were brought together between the fourth and ninth centuries under the rule of an emperor and the imperial court located at Heian-ky. Beginning in the 12th century, a class of warrior nobility enforced a succession of military dictators (shgun) and feudal lords (daimy) who wielded political power (samurai).
Although the Japanese archipelago has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic (30,000 BC), the first documented reference of it is found in a Chinese chronicle (the Book of Han), which was completed in the second century AD. Japan's kingdoms were brought together between the fourth and ninth centuries under the rule of an emperor and the imperial court located at Heian-ky. Beginning in the 12th century, a class of warrior nobility enforced a succession of military dictators (shgun) and feudal lords (daimy) who wielded political power (samurai).