Chōfu

Chōfu is a city on the western side of the Tokyo Metropolis, about 20 kilometres west of downtown Tokyo, on the Musashino Terrace between the floodplains of the Tama and Iruma rivers. Its name is said to come from the fact that the area was allowed to pay taxes in cloth instead of rice, and in the Edo period it prospered as a post station on the Kōshū Kaidō and as a centre of sericulture. Chōfu Town and neighbouring Jindai Village were established in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1889, the district passed to Tokyo in 1893, and Jindai merged with Chōfu on 1 April 1955 to form the present city. Chōfu is a regional commercial centre and a bedroom community for central Tokyo, hosts the headquarters of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and is home to the University of Electro-Communications. In 2021 it had about 238,087 residents on 21.58 square kilometres.