Japan · Tokyo Prefecture · Tokyo
Kōtō, Tokyo — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Kōtō is an eastern ward of Tokyo, a canal-crossed borough holding Fukagawa, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and Kidzania Tokyo.
About Kōtō
Where to stay in Kōtō
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Kōtō spreads its rooms across old and new ground. Fukagawa keeps its beds among temple lanes and the low streets that the poet Bashō once walked, close to the Fukagawa Edo Museum and its rebuilt Edo-period township. Sleep in Fukagawa for the old town.
The reclaimed waterfront swings the other way, dropping guests near the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and the family crowds of Kidzania Tokyo, where wide boulevards and canal bridges replace the temple grid entirely.
About Kōtō
What are the main landmarks in Kōtō?
Kōtō gathers museums of many kinds. The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo anchors the ward's art, while the Fukagawa Edo Museum rebuilds a whole Edo-period township indoors and the Bashō Museum keeps the memory of the poet who lived along these canals. Kidzania Tokyo draws the families.
Two quieter halls carry the harder history, for the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage records the firebombing of the eastern wards and the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall preserves the fishing boat caught in a hydrogen-bomb test. The Hiraki Ukiyo-e Museum rounds out the set with woodblock prints.
What is the history of Kōtō?
Kōtō took its present shape in 1947. That year two older wards, Fukagawa and Jōtō, were merged into one ward of Tokyo, joining the temple quarter to the newer reclaimed flats behind it. Water shaped everything here.
Fukagawa grew as a canal town of timber yards and rice warehouses where the poet Bashō settled, and the low ground beyond it was pushed into the bay as landfill over the centuries that followed. The firebombing of the eastern wards is remembered at the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage. The canals still thread the ward.
Where is Kōtō?
Kōtō is an eastern ward of Tokyo, a low borough of canals and reclaimed flats running from the temple lanes of Fukagawa out to the waterfront around the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.
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Updated July 2026