Ikebukuro

photo by MaedaAkihiko · CC BY-SA 4.0

photo by Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France · CC BY 2.0

photo by Celuici · CC BY-SA 3.0

Sunshine 60 stands where Sugamo Prison hanged seven war criminals in 1948.

East of the station, Sunshine 60 rises on the site of Sugamo Prison (demolished in 1971, after seven war criminals were hanged there in 1948, among them the former prime minister Hideki Tōjō). The skyscraper, the tallest in Japan when it was completed in 1978, now houses an aquarium, and right beside it runs Otome Road, the street of manga and video games for a female audience. West of the station is the Tōbu department store.

Ikebukuro began as a farming village and became a commercial district in the Taishō and Shōwa periods, helped by the low cost of land; in 1932 it became part of Toshima Ward. Sugamo Prison, which under the Allied occupation (1945–1952) held about two thousand Japanese accused of war crimes, closed in 1962 and was demolished in 1971: Sunshine 60 was built on its site in 1978. Since the ’80s the area north of the station has been the main settlement of Tokyo's Chinese community, smaller than Yokohama's.

ℹ️ The streets and the station, which can always be walked through, have two distinct sides: the east exit leads to the Seibu department store, Sunshine 60 and Otome Road, the west exit to the Tōbu. The hours are those of the individual shops, not of the public street.

🚉 Ikebukuro · 7 min walk

Sources: gotokyo.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · wattention.com

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