How Tokyo Became a Megalopolis - 3D Timelapse

Tokyo 3D timelapse, 1400 to 2026: watch the evolution of Tokyo from a fishing village on Edo Bay to a megalopolis of nearly 10 million, one year at a time. The entire history of Tokyo, from Edo Castle and the shoguns to Tokyo Skytree, rebuilt in 3D from real data. CHAPTERS 0:00 1400 · A fishing village on Edo Bay 0:25 1457 · Ōta Dōkan builds Edo Castle 0:56 1590 · Tokugawa Ieyasu arrives 1:17 1603 · Capital of the shoguns 2:04 1657 · The Great Fire of Meireki 2:40 1707 · Mount Fuji erupts 3:10 1772 · The Great Meiwa Fire 3:24 1818 · Edo’s red line 3:45 1853 · The Black Ships 3:59 1855 · The Ansei Edo earthquake 4:15 1868 · Edo becomes Tokyo, and the first railway 4:58 1914 · Tokyo Station 5:12 1923 · The Great Kantō earthquake 5:51 1945 · The Great Tokyo Air Raid 6:12 1958 · Tokyo Tower 6:25 1964 · Olympics and the bullet train 6:40 1971 · Skyscrapers rise in Shinjuku 6:53 1989 · The bubble 7:07 1993 · Rainbow Bridge and Odaiba 7:22 2012 · Tokyo Skytree 7:50 2026 · Tokyo today FACTS FROM THE FILM • When Tokugawa Ieyasu arrived in 1590, Edo was described as having “100 or fewer” thatched houses. • Edo Castle’s third keep (1637) stood 58.6 m tall with its stone base. It burned in 1657 and was never rebuilt; its rebuilt stone base still stands in the East Gardens. • The Great Fire of Meireki (1657) burned 60–70% of Edo. Records give 30,000 to 100,000 deaths. • Around 1721 Edo had roughly a million people: 501,394 townspeople were counted, plus an estimated half a million samurai. • In 1707 ash from Mount Fuji’s Hōei eruption fell on Edo, about 100 km away, for two weeks. • Japan’s first railway opened on 14 October 1872, Shimbashi to Yokohama. At Takanawa it ran 2.7 km across the sea on a stone-walled embankment; 770 m of it was unearthed in 2019. • The 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and the fires after it left about 105,000 people dead or missing; 44% of Tokyo City burned. • In one night, 10 March 1945, about 41 km² of Tokyo burned in an air raid. • The 2025 census counted 9,944,109 people in Tokyo’s 23 wards. ABOUT THE NUMBERS Population figures before 1920 are historical estimates and are marked with ≈ on screen. From 1920 they are census counts for the area of today’s 23 wards, recalculated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government; the 2026 figure is its monthly estimate. Every building of 40 m or more stands at its real position, footprint and height from Japan’s national 3D city model (PLATEAU), and the named skyscrapers rise in the year they were finished. The moats, canals and the Sumida follow the real gates and bridges and appear in the years they were dug and filled in. Railways and stations are at their real positions, with the trains of each era, from the 1872 steam engine to the Shinkansen. SOURCES • TMG, population of the 23 wards 1920–2020: https://www.toukei.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/... • Statistics Bureau of Japan, 2025 Census results: https://www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/2... • TMG monthly population estimate (Sept 2026): https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/informa... • Population of Edo (Japanese Wikipedia, 江戸の人口): https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/江戸の人口 • Cabinet Office, report on the 1657 Meireki fire: https://www.bousai.go.jp/kyoiku/kyoku... • Edo Castle (Japanese Wikipedia, 江戸城): https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/江戸城 • Hōei eruption (宝永大噴火): https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/宝永大噴火 • Great Meiwa fire (明和の大火): https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/明和の大火 • Edo’s city limits in 1818 (TMG): https://www.toshiseibi.metro.tokyo.lg... • 1923 Great Kantō earthquake: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/関東大震災 and https://dil.bosai.go.jp/workshop/01ko... • Bombing of Tokyo, 10 March 1945: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing...) • Building footprints and heights: 3D City Model (Project PLATEAU), Tokyo 23 wards, FY2020, MLIT, as vector tiles by indigo-lab (CC BY 4.0): https://github.com/indigo-lab/plateau... • Landmark and skyscraper heights and dates: SKYDB (https://www.skydb.net), CTBUH and Wikipedia • Bridges: Chūō City list of bridges (CC BY): https://www.city.chuo.lg.jp/documents... castle gates: https://visit-chiyoda.tokyo • Moat dimensions: Ministry of the Environment, Kōkyo Gaien moats: https://www.env.go.jp/press/files/jp/... • The first railway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takanaw... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JGR_Cla... Original soundtrack, composed for this film. #Tokyo #3DTimelapse #TokyoHistory #CityEvolution #Japan #Edo #Timelapse #JapanHistory Which city should I build next?