Tokyo

Ōta Dōkan built a modest castle on the marshy lowlands of Musashino in 1457, calling it Edo. For over a century it remained a minor outpost until Tokugawa Ieyasu chose it as his shogunate capital in 1603, triggering the most dramatic urban expansion in Japanese history. When Emperor Meiji moved from Kyoto in 1868 and renamed it Tokyo — Eastern Capital — the city of one million became the beating heart of a modernising empire.