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There is a long-running rivalry between the east and west of Japan. Kansai (west) includes cities like Kyoto and Osaka, and Kantou (east) includes Tokyo and Yok
by anigbrowl 3y ago
There is a long-running rivalry between the east and west of Japan. Kansai (west) includes cities like Kyoto and Osaka, and Kantou (east) includes Tokyo and Yokohama. For reasons the author doesn’t understand well, the people of Kansai and Kantou pride themselves on these differences.
The shape of the country historically made for roughly bipolar military confrontations, involving shifting alliances between the many warlords. Centuries ago, Kyoto was the Imperial Capital and Osaka the economic capital. West of Japan are Korea and China, and the commercial and cultural trade made the region wealthy and powerful. Near the end of the 16th century, a warlord named Nobunaga managed to unify most of Japan, but was betrayed by an associate. An intense struggle for control ensued, culminating in a battle at Segihara in 1600, which is more or less the middle of the country. The winner, a general named Tokugawa Ieyasu, became a Shogun (military governor, nominally in service of the Emperor but pragmatically in charge) and was based in Edo, now named Tokyo. His defeated rival was based in, you guessed it, Osaka.
Edo was just a small fishing village with a broken-down castle until Ieyasu showed up around 1590, rebuilt the castle, and made the area into his base. After winning the battle of Segihara he was mostly generous in victory, but required other warlords to maintain households in Edo (making them de facto hostages) and contribute money and labor to build out the infrastructure there; within 5 years Edo was a large city of ~150k. Tokugawa also closed the country and banned foreign trade, not least to prevent his rivals from raising armies and capital overseas. His family continued to rule Japan until the Shogunate was abolished and the country opened up the outside world in the 19th century. Edo was renamed Tokyo and made the official capital, although the Imperial family continued to reside in Kyoto until Emperor Taisho moved to Tokyo in the early 20th century.
- Jensson 3y ago> Edo was renamed Tokyo and made the official capital It is funny that they just reversed Kyoto when they picked that name. I wonder why they did that. Edit: Apparently "kyo" just means capitol and Tokyo is eastern capitol and Kyoto is capitol city. But it wouldn't surprise me if they picked those names as a pun to make the names similar.
- mistermark 3y agoTurns out they didn't, quite. Tōkyō is East Capital, the Tō is 'East'; Kyōto is Capital City, the To being 'City'. Kyō is the same in each.
- glandium 3y agoWhat they did, though, is change Tokyo from a fu (符) to a to (都). Tokyo is the only to, and there wasn't one before, they came up with it for Tokyo. There were other fus, but there are only two left nowadays: Kyoto-fu and Ōsaka-fu. Why do I mention this? Because Tokyo-to is written 東京都. Kyoto is written 京都. Remember that 東 means East. And yes, there are places in the east of Kyoto that carry the name 東京都 (higashi-Kyoto, higashi being another reading of the character 東). This has to be a troll.
- glandium 3y ago> Segihara Sekigahara
- anigbrowl 3y agoOh dear, how embarrassing, and now it's too late to fix. Sorry about that and thanks for the correction.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tkgally 3y agoSome additional reasons for the rivalry between East and West are language and demography. The dialects of Japanese spoken in Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, etc. are distinct and different from both the colloquial Japanese spoken in Tokyo and the standard language that is taught in schools and used in broadcasting. A person from Osaka who visits Tokyo is immediately identified by their accent and vocabulary. This makes people very aware of where they and others come from within Japan. Also, Tokyo is similar to cities like New York and London. While there are people who have lived in Tokyo their whole lives and whose ancestors also lived in Tokyo, since the 19th century the city has drawn waves of immigrants from throughout Japan. This makes it something of a melting pot for ethnic Japanese. While Osaka has also drawn outsiders, it has a larger core of people who have lived there for generations. This creates a sense of loyalty and attachment to the home area and to the food eaten there. That localism is amplified by the mass media. A popular topic on television quiz shows is differences in food, speech, and behavior between eastern and western Japan.
- glandium 3y ago> A popular topic on television quiz shows is differences in food, speech, and behavior between eastern and western Japan. A popular topic on television quiz shows is differences in food, speech, and behavior in various parts or Japan. It's not only Eastern vs. Western. It's prefectures vs. prefectures. Hyogo vs. Fukuoka vs. Akita vs. Ibaraki, vs. etc. This regionalism is amplified by the fact that there aren't, actually, fully national TV channels (except for NHK, with exceptions for the news). So for example, I live in Aichi, which is between Kantou and Kansai. The channels I have are: Toukai TV, NHK, Chukyo TV, CBC, Meitele and TV Aichi. They are part of broader networks, so for instance, Toukai TV is "mostly" Fuji TV, Chukyo TV is "mostly" Nippon TV, CBC is mostly TBS, Meitele is "mostly" TV Asahi and TV Aichi is "mostly" TV Tokyo. "Mostly" because they all have local programs or even sometimes programs from Kansai instead of whatever might be on air in Tokyo on the corresponding channels. To give an example of a program I can watch on Chukyo TV, that can't be seen in Tokyo and some other areas: https://www.ytv.co.jp/iinkai/area/index.html https://www.ytv.co.jp/iinkai/area/index.html (it's produced by Yomiuri TV, which is from Osaka)