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Context: "At 06:10 yesterday, on the outer circle of the capital city highway in Minato District Tokyo a traffic collision uccurred, involving five cars and at least one truck."

What does the capital city highway mean?

Does it mean A highway which is located in the capital of Japan (Tokyo) And if the answer is, yes, then shouldn't there be a possessive form like this => "the capital city's highway"

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  • The highway is somehow connected to the capital, thus the name. It doesn't have to be exclusively inside the city (it can go through it, loop around it, originate from it, be its main destination)
    – Andrew
    Commented Jan 17, 2022 at 21:41

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No apostrophe is needed. However I'd think I'd treat this as a proper noun, and capitalise accordingly.

This is a literal translation of 首都高速道路 and the English grammar may have been influenced by the Japanese. I take this to be the name of a certain road: it is "The Capital City Expressway". It names a particular road and isn't just an expressway belonging to the capital city.

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  • Google maps disapointed me. It keeps giving me road construction companies. And a similarly named highway in Sacramento California. I am sad. I wanted to give a link to the highway. But I still gave you thumbs up.
    – Dan
    Commented Jan 17, 2022 at 23:32
  • If I paste "首都高速道路" into Google, the sidebar tells me it's the "Shuto Expressway", which Wikipedia says is "a network of toll expressways in the Greater Tokyo Area".
    – Roger Lipscombe
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 10:01
  • Yes, "Shuto" means "Capital City". It would be reasonable to leave the name untranslated as proper nouns are often untranslated, but merely transcribed. Certainly "Shuto's Highway" would be very odd!
    – James K
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 10:36

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