was a

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

located in the western portion of

Tokyo Metropolis Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, Japan. Tanashi means the land without rice. Because of the area's elevation relative to the Tamagawa River, traditional irrigation and rice farming was impossible. Hence, the area was named Tanashi. At the time of its merger, the city had an estimated

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...

of 78,165 and a

density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematical ...

of 11,495 persons per km². The total area was 6.8 km². The area of modern Tanashi prospered during the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characte ...

as a post station on the Ome Kaido and Tokorozawa Kaido, and was part of ancient Musashi Province. After the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

it came under the jurisdiction of the short-lived prefectures of Shinagawa (1868) and Irima (1871), before becoming part of

Kanagawa is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kanagaw ...

in 1872. During the early

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

(1878) cadastral reform, it became the town of Tanashi within Kitatama District in Kanagawa. The entire district was transferred to the administrative control of Tokyo Metropolis in 1893. Tanashi was connected to central Tokyo by train from 1927. Tanashi was elevated to city status in 1967. On January 21, 2001, Tanashi was merged with the neighboring city of Hoya to create the city of Nishi-Tōkyō, and thus Tanashi no longer exists as an independent

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

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* Populated places disestablished in 2001 Dissolved municipalities of Tokyo {{Tokyo-geo-stub