Japan · Kanagawa · Kawasaki
Isago, Kawasaki — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Isago is a district of Kawasaki ward at the centre of the old Kawasaki-shuku, one of the four towns that made up the post station on the Tokaido.
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Where to stay in Isago
Where the beds are, and what that means for the visit.
The station is the reason to stay here. Keikyu Kawasaki station stands in the district and the east exit of Kawasaki station is close, so the whole area is commercial, with the Ginryugai and the Kawasaki Ginza shopping streets running through it. Banks fill the rest.
The head office of the Kawasaki Shinkin Bank is here among many other financial offices. Isago covers about eleven hectares in all.
About Isago
What are the main landmarks in Isago?
Sozan-ji carries the district's oldest record. Its bell, given by Sasaki Yasutsuna, is inscribed for Shofuku-ji in Kawasaki-sho in Bushu, and the temple was founded in the time of Minamoto no Yoritomo. It was restored in the Sengoku period.
Mamiya Nobumori, a retainer of the Later Hojo, brought it back, and after his death the temple took the name Sozan-ji from his posthumous name. A poet was born in the honjin. Sato Sonosuke, the lyricist and poet, came from the honjin house that stood here and ran his Shi no Ie society in the district.
What is the history of Isago?
The Tokaido was laid out in 1601 without a station here. Kawasaki became a post station only in 1623, and four years later Isago, Kunezaki, Shinshuku and Kotoro together formed Kawasaki-shuku. The honjin stood in this town.
Farmland surrounded it, the yield stood at a little over four hundred koku through the Shoho and Genroku registers, and the Tenpo detail book counts a hundred and forty-seven houses whose people worked in teahouses and inns between the farming. Disasters came in turn. A typhoon flooded the Tama in 1742, a great fire took the post town in 1761, the Tenpo famine of 1836 left more than half the people starving, and the Ansei earthquake of 1855 destroyed eighteen houses and damaged thirty-eight.
The shogunate propped the station up. It made the sukego system formal in 1694 and gave Kawasaki-shuku the rights to the Rokugo ferry, because post horses and couriers were a heavy burden to carry alone. The railway ended all of it. Japan's first line opened between Shinbashi and Yokohama in 1872, the post station lost its transport function, and the ground turned into the commercial district in front of the new station.
Where is Isago?
Isago lies in Kawasaki ward on the alluvial lowland of the Tama river, bordering Honcho to the north, Miyamotocho and Higashidacho to the east, Minamicho and Ogawacho to the south and Ekimae-Honcho to the west.
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More areas in Kawasaki
Updated September 2026