Kōenji

photo by Wei-Te Wong from Taipei City, Taiwan, Republic of China · CC BY-SA 2.0

photo by Ximonic (Simo Räsänen) · CC BY-SA 4.0

Second-hand clothes shops since 1987; since 1975 the JIROKICHI live house, with no stage, at floor level.

Around the station, ten shōtengai branch out in three directions: to the south the Pal and Look arcades, where most of the second-hand clothes shops are; to the north the historic Kōenji Junjō Shōtengai; to the west, under and beside the elevated tracks, the arcade of izakaya that comes alive at sunset. At JIROKICHI, opened in 1975, the musicians play on the same floor as the audience: there is no stage.

The station opened in 1922 on the line that would become the Chūō, and has been elevated since 1964. The neighbourhood burned almost entirely in the air raid of April 1945; after the war the traders on the two sides of the station quarrelled over the reconstruction plan, and in 1957 their children organised a dance to stitch the neighbourhood back together (they jokingly called it ‘Baka Odori’, the ‘fools' dance’), which would become today's Awa Odori. In the same years the music scene was born: the rock café Muvin opened in 1968, the singer-songwriter Yoshida Takurō released the song ‘Kōenji’ in 1972, tying the neighbourhood to folk and rock, and in 1975 JIROKICHI opened, among the first live houses in Japan. From the 1980s the second-hand clothes shops followed the same crowd: from the first, opened in 1987, to two hundred in the early 2000s; today over a hundred remain, concentrated above all along the Pal shōtengai.

ℹ️ The neighbourhood spreads out from JR Kōenji Station (Chūō-Sōbu line, north and south exits): to the south the Pal and Look arcades, to the north the Kōenji Junjō Shōtengai and Kōshin street, to the west the arcade of izakaya under the elevated tracks. No hours of its own: these are public streets and private shops, each with its own hours. During the Awa Odori (late August) road traffic around the station is restricted from 16:10 to 20:30 on the two days of the festival.

🚉 Kōenji · in front of the station

Sources: gotokyo.org · koenji-awaodori.com · urbanlife.tokyo · gendai.media · smtrc.jp · hotosena.com

All series · Open the map