Which country has a current capital with a name that is an anagram of the former capital?

In English, Kyoto and Tokyo (which have both served as the Japanese capital) happen to be anagrams; meaning each word can be spelled by rearranging the letters of the other.

Kyoto was officially the capital of Japan for over one thousand years before Tokyo became the capital. Kyoto was founded and named in 794 CE. Prior to that, several other cities had gone by the name, as Kyoto means “imperial capital”. Basically, wherever the current emperor decided to live or move, the city name went with him.

In 1864, during the Hamaguri rebellion, some 28,000 properties and homes in Kyoto were destroyed by fire. In retaliation, Emperor Meiji decided to move his capital from Kyoto to Edo in 1869, thus making that city the new capital of Japan. As the new “imperial seat” Edo needed to be renamed; it became Tokyo. Wait - why did Edo not become ‘‘Kyoto’?

It has nothing to do with English anagrams, although the characters used to spell the names of both cities in Japanese are also very similar, with one exception.

When writing the two cities’ respective names in Japanese, you’d write Kyoto as 京都 and Tokyo as 東京都. The additional character at the beginning, 東, stands for “east.” Essentially, while Kyoto means “imperial capital”, Tokyo translates to “east imperial capital.”

At a little over 200 miles away, Tokyo is indeed a bit further east. Tokyo remains the national capital to this day; Kyoto served as the capital of Japan from 794 to 1869.