Vintage clothing shops side by side along narrow lanes, and around Honda Theatre, a neighborhood known as the theater town
The closest neighborhoods in the same city.
The shopping streets in front of the station have quite a few narrow alleys about 2 meters wide, so narrow that even bicycles can barely pass each other on holidays. Along these shopping streets, vintage clothing stores line up one after another, with one even housed in a building converted from an old bathhouse. There are many well-known record stores, and the bookstores each have their own character.
Small theaters cluster around Honda Theatre, and there are also quite a few live houses around the station. The Inokashira Line runs direct to Shibuya, and the Odakyu Line runs direct to Shinjuku.
Take the Inokashira Line Express toward Shibuya, and it's just the next stop. Odakyu runs underground while the Inokashira Line runs on an elevated track; each company has its own ticket gates, but Keio's Central Exit sits right next to Odakyu's.
After Odakyu went underground in 2013, the roughly 1.7-kilometer stretch of former track between Setagaya-Daita and Higashi-kitazawa was turned into Shimokita Senro Gai, with one section lying outside the neighborhood.
In Time Out's 2024 list of the World's Coolest Streets, Chazawa-dori ranked 9th, the only street in Japan to make the list.
In 2020, this neighborhood had a population density of about 184 people per hectare. The narrow alleys in the shopping streets in front of the station have been pointed out as a pedestrian safety issue.
Based on our street photos, sidewalks rank 349th out of 395 neighborhoods in Tokyo, the weakest aspect of this neighborhood. The area around the station is low-lying, while the area near Higashi-kitazawa to the east sits on a plateau.
Shimokitazawa is not an official place name; it comes from Shimokitazawa Village, which existed before 1889 and was renamed Kitazawa in 1932. The village center was originally around Kitazawa Hachiman Shrine in Daizawa 3-chome, outside this neighborhood; before the Taisho era, this was farmland, and people had to walk to Shibuya to shop.
Shimokitazawa Station opened in 1927, and the Inokashira Line began service in 1933. South of the station was originally paddy fields with soft ground; it later turned into a shopping street, but the roads were never widened in time, leaving behind a tangle of narrow alleys.
In 1982, Honda Theatre opened on the former site of a bathhouse, and the nickname "theater town" owes much to it.
The roads that were never widened in time are now finally catching up: a 265-meter stretch of Auxiliary Road No. 54 west of Chazawa-dori will be widened to 22 to 26 meters. At the same time, a plaza of about 5,400 square meters will be built in front of the station to make walking and cycling safer.
Setagaya City has announced a target of completion within fiscal year 2028.
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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