History
Tokugawa Ieyasu founded Nagoya in 1610 as a castle town for his ninth son, establishing one of the three most senior Tokugawa branch families (the Gosanke) alongside Kii (Wakayama) and Mito. The city’s central position on the Tokaido road between Kyoto and Edo (Tokyo) made it a natural commercial and administrative hub through the Edo period, a role it has kept in different forms ever since.
From merchant city to manufacturing powerhouse
Nagoya’s modern identity was built in the 20th century, as the surrounding Chubu region industrialized around textiles, then ceramics (Noritake was founded here in 1904), then heavy manufacturing. Toyota, founded nearby as a spinoff of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, grew into the world’s largest automaker with its headquarters just outside the city, and the broader Nagoya area became — and remains — Japan’s automotive manufacturing heartland, alongside major aerospace (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries builds aircraft components here) and rail-technology industries, including the maglev trains developed and tested locally.
That industrial importance made Nagoya a heavy Allied bombing target during WWII, and much of the historic city center, including the original Nagoya Castle keep, was destroyed. The postwar rebuild deliberately used unusually wide boulevards — most famously the 100-meter-wide Hisaya Odori running through downtown — both for fire-prevention and as a statement of the city’s reconstruction ambitions.
Nagoya and its neighbors
Sitting almost exactly between Tokyo and Osaka on the Tokaido corridor, Nagoya has long had to define itself against two much more culturally dominant neighbors — a position locals sometimes address with self-deprecating humor, joking that Nagoya gets skipped for both. In practice, the city’s industrial weight gives it an economic importance out of proportion to its lower profile in popular culture compared with Tokyo or Osaka.
Getting there and getting around
Nagoya Station is a major Tokaido Shinkansen stop, about 100 minutes from Tokyo and 50 minutes from Osaka — including a stop for the N700S, the Shinkansen’s newest generation, developed and tested with heavy involvement from the region’s rail industry. The city has an extensive subway network covering most major sights.
