Yamanote in addition to Shitamachi

Yamanote山の手 as alive as Shitamachi下町 are traditional designation for two areas of Tokyo, Japan. Yamanote referenced to the affluent, upper-class areas of Tokyo west of a Imperial Palace. While citizens once considered it as consisting of Hongo, Kōjimachi, Koishikawa, Ushigome, Yotsuya, Akasaka, Aoyama and Azabu in the Bunkyō, Chiyoda in part, Shinjuku, and Minato wards, its size has grown to put the Nakano, Suginami and Meguro wards. Shitamachi is the traditional keep on to for the area of Tokyo including today the Adachi, Arakawa, Chiyoda in part, Chūō, Edogawa, Katsushika, Kōtō, Sumida, and Taitō wards, the physically low factor of the city along and east of the Sumida River.

The two regions work always been vaguely defined, as their identity was more based on culture and caste than on geography. While Tokugawa vassals of the warrior caste hatamoto and gokenin lived in the hilly Yamanote, lower castes merchants and artisans lived in the marshy areas almost the sea. This dual classes and geographic division has remained strong through the centuries while evolving with the times, and is still in common use today. Indeed, the two terms are now used also in other parts of the country. The term Yamanote still indicates a higher social status, and Shitamachi a lower one, even though de facto this is non always true.

Both the Yamanote and the Shitamachi defecate grown gradually over the years, and the map above shows them as they are today.

History of the terms

When the Tokugawa regime moved its seat of power to direct or establish to Edo, it granted nearly of the solid hilly regions to the military aristocracy and their families for residences, in factor taking improvement of its cooler summer. Marshland around the mouths of the Sumida and Tone rivers, to the east of the castle, was filled in, with the flatlands that resulted becoming the area for merchants and craftsmen who supplied and worked for the aristocracy. Thus, from the beginning of its existence, Tokyo the former Edo has been culturally and economically shared in two parts: the higher caste Yamanote, located on the hills of the Musashino Terrace, and the lower caste Shitamachi, literally "low town" or "low city", located next to the Sumida River. Although neither of the two was ever an official name, both stuck and are still in use. Both words are used with the same meaning in other parts of the country too. The term "Yamanote" is also used for example in Hokkaido, Oita, Yokohama and Osaka.

There are several theories about the etymology of the term Yamanote, in addition to its hilly location. In the book Gofunai Bikō御府内備考, it is said that Tokugawa Ietsuna's 1641–1680 younger brother Tsunashige was condition two suburban residences, one in Umite海手, and another in Yamanote, so it is possible that the opposite of Yamanote was not Shitamachi, but Umite. However, with the progressive construction of landfills in the Sumida estuary and the urbanization of the area, gradually Shitamachi replaced Umite. The pairing of Yamanote - Shitamachi is living attested in records of the spoken Linguistic communication as early as 1650, and from that time appears often in documents and books. The warrior/merchant distinction between Yamanote and Shitamachi was also living creation early on.