Tokyo

Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is Japan's capital and its largest city by population. The city sits at the top of Tokyo Bay in the Kantō region, halfway along the coast of Honshu, the main island of Japan. More than 14 million people lived in the city proper in 2023, and the Greater Tokyo Area, with about 33 million residents in 2025, is one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is the seat of the Japanese government and the Emperor.

Tokyo appears in more of the rankings collected here than any other city in this group. Monocle placed it No. 1 in its Quality of Life Survey 2026, after No. 9 in 2025, and Resonance Consultancy ranked it No. 4 in World's Best Cities 2026, where it is first for restaurants and museums. Condé Nast Traveller (UK) readers voted it No. 2 in 2025 and No. 7 in 2026, calling it a "neon city" where cultures and ages collide. Travel + Leisure readers ranked it No. 3 in 2025 — one called it "friendly, clean, and fun" — and No. 10 in 2026. Oxford Economics put it No. 9 in its Global Cities Index 2026, while the Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Liveability Index 2026 and Time Out's Best Cities in the World 2026 both placed it No. 10.

Time Out's local writers describe Tokyo as the safest and most walkable megacity and note that it has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city, and that it received a record number of international tourists in 2025. Tokyo began as Edo, which became the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 and had grown to more than a million people by the mid-18th century. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868 the imperial capital moved there from Kyoto and the city was renamed Tokyo, meaning "Eastern Capital". It was badly damaged by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and by bombing in the Second World War, then rebuilt rapidly from the late 1940s.

Sources of this text: Wikipedia · Monocle · Condé Nast Traveller (UK) · Oxford Economics · Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) · Time Out · Travel + Leisure · Resonance Consultancy