Senzoku, Tokyo — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Senzoku?

Yoshiwara shrine gathers five older shrines into one. The five Inari shrines that had stood inside the Yoshiwara were merged in early Meiji, and the result is one of the Asakusa Seven Lucky Gods, revered for the performing arts. Yoshiwara Benzaiten stands nearby.

It marks where the women of the quarter fled the fire in the Great Kanto earthquake. A twelve-storey tower once rose here. The Asakusa Junikai was built in Senzoku in the Meiji era and came down in the same earthquake.

What is the history of Senzoku?

Ponds covered this ground in antiquity. The Senzoku pond and the Hime-ga-ike lay here, and in the medieval period a wide stretch from Asakusa Tennocho to the Senju Ohashi was called Senzoku-go. The name is disputed.

It is said to come either from an offering for a thousand monks or from a thousand bundles of paddy given as temple land. The village came next. Senzoku village existed in the early modern period, and the shogunate then moved the Yoshiwara here after the Meireki fire, carrying the name with it from the east side of the Ningyocho street to the paddies behind Senso-ji.

Two names followed from that. The quarter here became the Shin-Yoshiwara and the old ground near Ningyocho the Moto-Yoshiwara. The village was split up in 1889.

Senzoku went to Asakusa ward, Shitaya ward and Minami-Senju town when Tokyo City was created, and the address reform of August 1965 turned the old Yoshiwara ground into the third and fourth chome, which is how the name Yoshiwara left the map.

Where is Senzoku?

Senzoku lies in the north-east of Taito ward in Tokyo, bounded by the Dote-dori to the east against Higashi-Asakusa and Nihonzutsumi, with Asakusa to the south, Iriya to the west and Ryusen to the north.