A stretch of some 130 secondhand bookshops along Yasukuni-dori, Jimbocho, most facing north so the books don't fade in the sun
The closest neighborhoods in the same city.
Yasukuni-dori runs west from the Surugadai-shita intersection, lined one after another with about 130 secondhand bookstores; most shops face north on the south side of the street, so the sun doesn't damage the books.
Walking off the main road into the side streets nearby, like the Imagawa Koji area, you find a low-rise neighborhood built on a framework of narrow lanes, carrying on the layout of Edo-period chonin (townspeople) districts. Kanda Jimbocho 1-chome to 3-chome, where the bookstore district sits, had about 3,250 residents in 2020 — nearly half of this neighborhood.
There are also cafes on the street, many of them old-fashioned kissaten that have been patronized for years. There are also lots of curry shops — one theory is that curry became popular on the secondhand bookstore street because you can eat it with a book in one hand.
The Kanda area has more than 400 shops serving curry, and the finals of the autumn curry competition are held every year at Ogawa Square within this neighborhood.
For everyday convenience, this neighborhood ranks 9th out of 395 neighborhoods in Tokyo, and 12th for healthcare — shopping and seeing a doctor are both easy here. Jimbocho Station is served by the Mita Line, the Shinjuku Line, and the Hanzomon Line.
This neighborhood is a bookstore district, and not many people live here: in 2020, there were about 96 people per hectare.
The blocks are cut into small pieces by roads, with old houses packed tightly one against the next, so disaster preparedness has been flagged as an issue.
From our street photos, greenery ranks 238th, the lowest-ranked item for this neighborhood.
The area's name comes from the residence of Jimbo Nagaharu, a hatamoto (shogunal retainer). By 1905 this was already a place where students rented rooms; a Western-style restaurant served curry rice for just 3 sen a plate, while a railway dining hall charged 30 sen.
After the Great Misaki Fire of 1913, Iwanami Shigeo opened a secondhand bookstore on the burned-out site, and bookstores and cafes gradually sprang up after that.
The corner at the Surugadai-shita intersection is planned to be redeveloped into a 22-story building about 110 meters tall, with roughly 104 housing units on the mid-to-upper floors. The area currently has mostly buildings built to the old seismic standards and wooden houses; completion in fiscal year 2029 was the target announced by the developer in 2023.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government's project page (updated October 2025) lists both the start and completion dates as still "undetermined."
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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