The ukiyo-e center Edo is known today as Tokyo.
Edo was the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate from 1603 until the Meiji government renamed it Tokyo in 1868. The name means “eastern capital,” distinguishing it from Kyoto, the imperial capital to the west. As the shogunate consolidated power, Edo grew from a castle town into one of the world’s largest cities.
Ukiyo-e flourished there because a large urban population supported publishers, artists, carvers, printers, theaters, pleasure districts, and art shops. The city’s name therefore appears frequently in art history: “Edo prints” generally means ukiyo-e produced in and around the city during the Edo period. Kyoto and Osaka were also important print centers, especially the Kamigata region, but they were not the city called Edo.
A related point of confusion is that the Edo period is named after the city, while the period itself covered all of Japan from 1603 to 1868. Tokyo remains Japan’s capital and is the modern metropolis built around historic Edo.