A student quarter right next to Todai, where Kikuzaka still keeps the pawnshop Higuchi Ichiyo used to visit
The closest neighborhoods in the same city.
The northern edge of Hongo borders the University of Tokyo's Hongo campus, making this a student neighborhood with plenty of boarding houses and inns. In the Meiji era, Higuchi Ichiyo moved with her mother and sister into Kikuzaka, an area full of slopes, in 1890 for the cheap rent.
Hongo-kan in 6-chome was built in 1905 and later converted into a boarding house—a three-story wooden building with over seventy rooms, the largest of its kind in the city of Tokyo in the early Showa era. Most tenants were students from the University of Tokyo and Tokyo University of the Arts, and about 50 people were still living there in the 1990s.
By 2020, half the households in the whole neighborhood were renters, and six in ten were single-person households. The main street, Hongo-dori, runs along the ridge of the plateau, while the Kikuzaka area is full of slopes and old houses.
Hongo is one of Tokyo's top educational and cultural districts, with plenty of publishers and research institutes. For everyday convenience, it ranks 19th out of 395 neighborhoods in Tokyo, and 49th for daily shopping.
You don't need to go far to see a doctor either: it ranks 19th for healthcare, and Juntendo Hospital, affiliated with Juntendo University, is right in 3-chome.
Hongo-sanchome Station is served by the Marunouchi Line and the Oedo Line, and the neighborhood ranks 20th for public transit. However, the two lines aren't connected underground, so transferring means going up to street level first and walking over.
In 2020, about 250 people lived per hectare in this neighborhood. The Kikuzaka area has many slopes and many old houses as well.
The entire northern area is the University of Tokyo campus and isn't part of the neighborhood.
This area used to be called Yushima-Hongo, later shortened to just Hongo. The Kaneyasu Building at the Hongo-sanchome intersection was originally a small shop opened by a dentist in 1735, selling a tooth powder called Nyukosan.
An Edo-period senryu poem goes "Hongo is still Edo as far as Kaneyasu," referring to this very shop; it closed around 2017, though the building still stands. From the Meiji era through the Showa era, many writers lived in Hongo, and it was in her rented room in Kikuzaka that Ichiyo resolved to become a novelist.
The Iseya pawnshop, which Ichiyo frequently visited, still stands in Kikuzaka today. Hongo-kan, however, did not survive: it was demolished in 2011, and an apartment building of the same name now stands on the site.
Compared with the 395 Tokyo neighborhoods in this guide (scores 0–10)
Hospitals with inpatient beds (2020 data), public elementary and junior high schools whose catchment covers this area, high schools and universities within 1 km, stations, parks of 1 ha or more, and large shopping malls and department stores. Many Tokyo junior high students attend private schools, so junior high catchments are only a guide.
Maps show the shops and the sights. What a street is like, you only know by walking it. TidyMap uses AI street imagery analysis and public facility data to turn each area's street environment and everyday convenience into something you can compare. Search an address and look at the street outside first.
How to read it: yellow = poor, blue = good; grey = not enough data
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