Tokyo Prefecture, Japan — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Tokyo Prefecture known for?

Tokyo Prefecture is known as the seat of Japan's capital, the metropolis that holds the city of Tokyo itself. Officially the Tokyo Metropolis, or 東京都, it takes in most of the plain of Kantō and reaches out across a chain of islands running far to the south. The Greater Tokyo Area spills beyond it into neighbouring prefectures.

It is the country's centre of gravity. Everything national tends to bend toward Tokyo.

Where is Tokyo Prefecture?

Tokyo Prefecture sits on the plain of Kantō, the wide lowland at the heart of Japan, and takes in the city of Tokyo along with the land around it. Most of the prefecture is flat, urban ground. The metropolis fills the plain almost edge to edge, its built-up mass merging into the Greater Tokyo Area, which reaches out into parts of six neighbouring prefectures.

On the map it looks compact. In practice the capital's fabric runs far past the prefecture's own line, so where Tokyo ends and its neighbours begin is hard to read on the ground. Then the prefecture does something unusual.

Beyond the mainland it also governs a chain of islands that runs thousands of kilometres to the south, out into open ocean, so a single prefecture holds both a dense inland capital and remote ocean outposts. The contrast could hardly be sharper. One end is packed and inland, the other scattered specks of land far offshore.

That reach south is the prefecture's strangest geographic fact. Little else about Tokyo, or about any Japanese city, quite prepares a visitor for it.

What is Tokyo Prefecture like?

Tokyo Prefecture carries the character of a capital. As the seat of Japan's government and the focus of its national life, the metropolis sets much of the tone for the country as a whole, and what happens in Tokyo tends to reach the rest of Japan. Life here runs fast and dense across the plain of Kantō.

The official name, Tokyo Metropolis, or 東京都, marks it as more than a city; it is a whole prefecture organised around one urban centre. That scale is the defining cultural fact. Beneath the pace sits an older Japanese grain.

The prefecture dates as a modern unit only to 1868, yet the capital it holds gathers the traditions of the wider country into one place, from language to custom. Its reach is unusual. Because the prefecture also governs islands far to the south, its cultural span runs from the crowded heart of the Kantō plain to small, remote island communities with lives of their own.

Few places anywhere hold such range under a single name. The capital defines it, but it is not only the capital.

What is the history of Tokyo Prefecture?

Tokyo Prefecture took its modern form in 1868, when the metropolis was organised as a single administrative unit. From that point the city of Tokyo became the seat of Japan's capital, and the prefecture grew as the country's centre. Its rise was fast.

It spread across the plain of Kantō, drawing people and power inward, until the Greater Tokyo Area reached well beyond the prefecture's own borders.

What is the climate of Tokyo Prefecture?

Tokyo Prefecture has a temperate climate, humid in summer and cooler and drier in winter. On the plain of Kantō, the seasons turn clearly, with warm, sticky months giving way to bright, dry ones. The islands differ.

The prefecture's island chain, reaching far to the south, sits in warmer, more maritime air than the capital on the Kantō plain, so a single prefecture spans more than one kind of weather.

How do you get to Tokyo Prefecture?

Tokyo Prefecture is the main way into Japan. As the capital, it draws the country's principal air and rail connections onto the plain of Kantō, and the Greater Tokyo Area binds it to the neighbouring prefectures by dense lines of transport. Most journeys start here.

The southern islands are the exception, reached from the capital by sea and air across a long stretch of ocean rather than by any road.