Are there historical reasons for many of Japan's major settlements, such as Kyoto and Tokyo, being located on Japan's Pacific coast and facing away from their closest sources of trade (mainland Asia)? What are these reasons?

by PixelNotPolygon
ParallelPain

There are cities on the sea of Japan coast as well, like Kanazawa, Jōetsu, Niigata, and Akita. Three key things to remember are:

  1. Coastal settlements on the coast of the Sea of Japan are only closer to the coast of Korea and Manchuria that are also on the coast of the Sea of Japan. There's little to no difference in distance from elsewhere.
  2. For considerable periods of Japanese history (officially sanctioned) trade was limited to a couple of selected ports in Kyūshū, like Dazaifu (Fukuoka) or Nagasaki, anyway. So the distance to foreign seaborne trading partners was a moot point.
  3. Related to 2., Japanese cities had another thing that was at least just as important thing to worry about, if not more important, as access to foreign seaborne trade, and that is room for agriculture and living. The three largest cities in Japan today, Tōkyō, Ōsaka, and Nagoya, are located in some of the largest river delta coastal plains of Japan.

Also just FYI, Kyōto is inland, not coastal.