A former geisha quarter nicknamed Little Paris, where stone-paved lanes still run past black-walled wooden houses
The closest neighborhoods in the same city.
This area used to be a hanamachi (geisha district), and now, stepping off the main street into the back alleys, you'll find restaurants and ryotei (traditional high-end Japanese restaurants) tucked between the houses. There are also many French restaurants and French-language schools on the street, so some people call it "Little Paris".
Alleys like Hyogo Yokocho are paved with stone and lined with wooden buildings with black walls. There used to be a French school nearby, and the Institut Franco-Japonais de Tokyo is still there, so you'll see French people on the street.
The whole neighborhood has over 22,000 people. The chome named Kagurazaka, running from 1-chome to 6-chome, is home to just over 2,400 people, with the rest living in chome such as Yaraicho and Yokoderacho. Kagurazaka Station on the Tozai Line is in Yaraicho, and the area in front of the station is a quiet residential street.
Taking the Tozai Line from Kagurazaka Station, it's four stops east to Otemachi. In 2019 the station added Exit 1b, and there are now elevators all the way from ground level to the platform.
From the Kagurazaka-side exit down the slope to Iidabashi Station outside the neighborhood, the road is lined with a shopping street, and for everyday shopping this neighborhood ranks 17th out of 395 neighborhoods in Tokyo.
The Kagurazaka Festival in summer was started by the shopping association in 1972, with the Awa Odori dance as its highlight. Nearby Tsukudo Elementary School and Aijitsu Elementary School also form teams to dance along the main street.
The road from Iidabashi to Kagurazaka Station is an almost straight slope, with two small rises partway up. Based on our street photos, the sidewalks here rank 178th out of 395 neighborhoods in Tokyo.
Kagurazaka-dori runs one-way downhill in the morning and, in principle, one-way uphill in the afternoon, so if you're driving you need to check the time of day. In the surrounding residential streets, apartment buildings have also been going up one after another in recent years.
This slope is said to have been developed in 1637 along with the outer moat of Edo Castle and Ushigome Gate. After the Meiji era, both sides of it became a hanamachi, and at its peak there were about 120 ryotei and over 700 geisha.
After the Great Kanto Earthquake, merchants from Nihombashi and Ginza moved in, and the area was once called "Yamanote Ginza". As traffic increased, with cars even crashing into a pottery shop along the street, the main street was changed in 1958 into a one-way street running in opposite directions in the morning and afternoon.
The alleys in 3-chome, 4-chome, and 5-chome are managed under a district plan; Hyogo Yokocho was added to it in 2020, and two more yokocho were added in 2023, in order to preserve the streetscape and improve disaster resilience.
On the western edge of the neighborhood, Ushigome Daiichi Junior High School is to be rebuilt together with a local library, on a site spanning Yaraicho inside the neighborhood and Kitayamabushicho outside it. Construction is scheduled to start in July 2028 and finish in February 2031, though the plan may still change.
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.
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How to read it: yellow = poor, blue = good; grey = not enough data
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