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Kanda's Lost Town Names Are Still Standing on the Corners

In the 1960s Tokyo swapped hundreds of old neighbourhood names for numbered blocks. In Kanda, the city went back and put the old names on posts at the street corners where they used to be: the smiths' town, the dyers' town, the vegetable market, the inn street. You can walk them in an afternoon.

町名由来板 chōmei yurai-banKanda Station → Kanda MyōjinFacts checked October 2026

You have probably passed through Kanda without noticing it: the station between Tokyo and Akihabara, the yakitori under the tracks, maybe Kanda Myōjin on the way to Akihabara. On the street corners south of the shrine there are small upright signboards with a block of Japanese text and a town name you won't find on a modern map. Each is a 町名由来板 (chōmei yurai-ban, "town-name origin board").

Chiyoda City started putting them up in 2003, the 400th anniversary of the Edo shogunate, with texts supervised by a historian from the Edo-Tokyo Museum. The city's own index lists 108 of them across the ward, and about 40 are in the Kanda area. Most of them mark a name that the 1960s address system removed.

This is a walk for someone who likes reading a city. You give up sights: there is nothing to photograph but a sign and an office building. What you get is a map of which trades lived where in Edo, still sitting under the street grid.

Why the names disappeared, and why some didn't

In 1962 Japan passed a law to replace its old addresses, which were based on land-registry lot numbers, with a system of district, chōme and block. In central Tokyo this meant merging dozens of small Edo-era towns into a few large numbered districts. Kanda got it between 1964 and 1974: Soto-Kanda (外神田) in December 1964, Uchi-Kanda (内神田) in April 1966, Kaji-chō 1–2 chōme in January 1974. Each time, the small names went.

But much of Kanda never adopted it. That is the whole reason the names you see on a map today look the way they do. The districts that accepted the reform lost their names. The ones that didn't kept them, along with the word Kanda in front, which every town of the old Kanda Ward had been given in 1947 when Kanda merged with Kōjimachi to form Chiyoda.

190019502000 every town only towns that refused the reform 1911 "Kanda" removed 1923 quake rezoning erases Renjaku-chō 1947 Chiyoda formed, "Kanda" added back 1964–74 address reform, district by district 2003 first plaques 2018 Misaki-chō and Sarugaku-chō get "Kanda" back
"Kanda" has been taken off these names twice and put back twice. Whether a street has it today depends on what that block decided in the 1960s.

Counting the city's own list of districts that never adopted the reform, plus the two restored in 2018, 28 town names in Chiyoda still start with 神田. Kanda Sudachō, Kanda Kon'yachō, Kanda Tachō, Kanda Kajichō 3-chōme, Kanda Sakumachō, Kanda Jimbōchō. If an address you are walking past begins with 神田, that block said no.

The names also survived somewhere less official. The neighbourhood associations (町会, chōkai) that carry the portable shrines at the Kanda Matsuri kept their old names after the addresses changed. The city's plaque list records them: the Kanda Hatago-chō association, the Kanda Matsuzumi-chō association, and others, all for towns that have officially been "Soto-Kanda 1-chōme" or "2-chōme" since 1964.

What the names say

Edo was laid out so that the shogunate's craftsmen and suppliers lived together, often on land granted to a master who served the castle. Kanda, just north-east of the castle, was full of them. A town name was usually a job description.

Name on the plaqueMeansWhere the name came from
鍛冶町 Kaji-chōSmiths' townThe shogunate's chief smith, Takai Iori, was granted land here and smiths gathered around him. After the war the street was known as the Kanda hardware street.
鍋町 Nabe-chōPot townHome of Shiina Yamashiro, the shogunate's official iron caster.
紺屋町 Kon'ya-chōIndigo dyers' townDyers gathered here around 1596–1615. The plaque says the tenugui and yukata dyed here set the fashion in Edo.
多町 Ta-chō"Many town"Began as 田町, "rice-field town", on filled-in paddies. A vegetable market made it prosperous, and the character changed to 多, "many".
連雀町 Renjaku-chōPack-frame townMakers of renjaku, the wooden frames peddlers carried goods on.
旅籠町 Hatago-chōInn townThe start of the Nakasendō and the Nikkō Onari road. Inns lined the street.
猿楽町 Sarugaku-chōNoh townThe Kanze troupe of sarugaku (early Noh) performers, protected by the shogunate, lived here.

The walk

The densest run of plaques goes north from Kanda Station, crosses the Kanda River at Shōheibashi bridge, and climbs to Kanda Myōjin. The city gives each plaque's location as a block address, not a corner. Paste the address in the facts box into a map app as written, in Japanese, and you will land on the right block. Then look around the corners.

Kanda River 神田川 JR tracks to Akihabara Station ↑ Start Kanda Station 神田駅 1 Kaji-chō 1鍛冶町一丁目7 2 Kaji-chō 2 3 Nabe-chō神田鍛冶町三丁目3 4 Kon'ya-chō 5 Ta-chō神田多町二丁目4 6 Kanda Market · 7 Renjaku-chō Shōheibashi 昌平橋 8 Hatago-chōbridge, east end 9 Matsuzumi-chō 10 Mitajidokoro-chō 11 Kanda Myōjin(Miyamoto-chō plaque, block 2-16) Schematic, not to scale. North is up.
The south bank is the craftsmen's grid; across the river the names change to inns, temple land and the shrine's gate town.

Kaji-chō, twice, and Nabe-chō

Start with the smiths. The Kaji-chō 1-chōme plaque says an 1824 shopping guide already listed blade and nail merchants here. The 2-chōme plaque adds that the back lane was called Geta Shinmichi, "clog alley", for its clog makers, and that in 1947 ten small towns, among them Kami-Shirakabe-chō, Shimo-Shirakabe-chō and Nabe-chō, were merged into this one. Then, in 1974, the address reform took "Kanda" off it.

A few blocks on, Kanda Kaji-chō 3-chōme still has its 神田, because this part never adopted the reform. Its plaque is really about Nabe-chō, the iron caster's town. The neighbourhood association renamed itself after the reform, a small sign that the people there kept count of the names even when the post office didn't.

Plaques: 千代田区鍛冶町1-7 · 千代田区鍛冶町2-7 · 千代田区神田鍛冶町3-3
Getting there: Kanda Station (神田駅), JR Yamanote, Chūō and Keihin-Tōhoku lines or Tokyo Metro Ginza Line. All three are within a few minutes' walk of the station.
Reality check: These stand on office-block pavements. On weekdays you'll be reading them among commuters.

Kon'ya-chō, the town split in two

Indigo dyers settled here at the start of the 1600s. The odd thing about Kanda Kon'ya-chō is on the map: it comes in two separate pieces. In 1719 the shogunate ordered part of the town moved to a site north of Kita-Norimono-chō, and the split was never undone. There is a plaque for each half.

Plaque: 千代田区神田紺屋町41 (northern half). The southern half has its own.
When: Any time. It's a pavement sign.

Ta-chō and the Kanda Market

The plaque at Kanda Tachō 2-chōme tells the story of the name: a "rice-field town" built on filled paddies around 1606, then a vegetable market from the early 1600s, then, after the Great Fire of 1657, the shogunate's official produce market. The town did so well that its 田 became 多.

A separate plaque in Kanda Sudachō 1-chōme is for the market itself, nicknamed the yatchaba for the auctioneers' calls. It covered about 15,000 tsubo (roughly five hectares), and produce came in by water to landings like Kamakura-gashi. It moved to Akihabara in 1928 and then to Ōta Ward in 1990. For more than sixty years, the produce market that left here sat beside Akihabara's electronics shops.

Plaques: 千代田区神田多町2-4 · 千代田区神田須田町1-8 (market)
Reality check: Nothing of the market is left to see. The plaque is the only marker.

Renjaku-chō, the name that moved to Mitaka

This is the best one. Renjaku-chō, near the old Sujikai bridge, was a town of pack-frame makers. After the 1657 fire, about 25 households were moved out to the Musashino plain west of the city, and took the name with them. That is why Mitaka, a commuter suburb on the Chūō Line, has districts called Kami-Renjaku and Shimo-Renjaku. The Kanda original didn't survive the 1960s reform because it was already gone: rezoning after the 1923 earthquake folded it into Sudachō and Awajichō.

Kanda 神田 連雀町 Renjaku-chō after 1923 → Sudachō 1 / Awajichō today: a plaque at 神田淡路町2-8 Mitaka 三鷹市 上連雀 · 下連雀 Kami-Renjaku · Shimo-Renjaku still on every address there after the 1657 fire ~25 households moved west West is left. Distance not to scale.
The name lasted longer in the suburb it was exiled to than in the town that started it.
Plaque: 千代田区神田淡路町2-8 (Renjaku-chō and Sanagi-chō on one board)
Nearby: The Kanda Market plaque and Sudachō are a short walk east.

Across the river: Hatago-chō and the shrine's back streets

Cross the Kanda River on Shōheibashi (昌平橋). The plaque for Kanda Hatago-chō stands in the small open space at the bridge's east end. This was the mouth of the Nakasendō, the inland road to Kyoto, and of the road the shogun took to Nikkō, and the street filled with inns. It has been Soto-Kanda 1-chōme since 1964.

From there the names change character. Kanda Matsuzumi-chō was temple land until 1872, when it was given a name with "pine" in it for luck. Kanda Myōjin-shita Mitajidokoro-chō, "the kitchen town below the shrine", was granted after the 1657 fire to the officials who supplied the castle kitchens. Then the Miyamoto-chō plaque, at block 2-16, the shrine's own address: the gate town that grew up after Kanda Myōjin moved here in 1616.

If you end up chatting with someone older at a shop or the shrine office, ask: この辺は昔、何町でしたか？ (kono hen wa mukashi, nani-chō deshita ka?) You may get the old name, and a story, rather than the address.
Plaques: 千代田区外神田1-1 (Hatago-chō, Shōheibashi east end) · 外神田2-3 (Matsuzumi-chō) · 外神田2-5 (Mitajidokoro-chō, behind the shrine) · 外神田2-16 (Miyamoto-chō)
Reality check: The city lists the Miyamoto-chō plaque at the shrine's block, but we could not confirm exactly where in or around the grounds it stands.
Getting back: Ochanomizu Station (御茶ノ水駅) or Suehirochō Station (末広町駅) are both walkable from the shrine.

Detour: Misaki-chō and Sarugaku-chō, the two that won

If you are near Suidōbashi or Jimbōchō, these two finish the story. Both lost "Kanda" to the reform, Misaki-chō in 1967 and Sarugaku-chō in 1969. In 2004 the Jimbōchō neighbourhood associations sent the mayor a petition with signatures. After a residents' survey and the first sitting of the ward's address council in 34 years, the assembly voted in October 2014, and from 1 January 2018 both became Kanda-Misakichō and Kanda-Sarugakuchō again. Postcodes and block numbers did not change. Only the name did.

Misaki-chō had fought before. When the reform first came, the ward assembly voted in October 1966 to call the area Nishi-Kanda. Residents organised, and in November 1966 the assembly voted again and kept "Misaki-chō".

Plaques: 千代田区神田三崎町2-5 · 千代田区神田猿楽町2-3
Getting there: Suidōbashi Station (水道橋駅) for Misaki-chō. Jimbōchō Station (神保町駅) or Ochanomizu Station for Sarugaku-chō.
You'll see on a plaqueReadingWhy it helps
町名由来板chōmei yurai-banThe heading on every board. Also the search term for the city's list.
町 / 丁目chō (or machi) / chōmeTown / numbered sub-district
旧kyū"Former", as in 旧町名, former town name
住居表示jūkyo hyōjiThe 1960s address reform. When it appears, the next date is when the name died.
町会chōkaiThe neighbourhood association named at the bottom of the board

The honest part

The plaques are in Japanese only. Neither the city's web pages nor any photos of the boards we found show an English version. Without some kanji, or a camera translation app, you will be looking at a sign. A translation app handles them reasonably, but expect it to garble the old place names.

There is nothing else to see. The buildings are modern offices, and the history is entirely in the text. If you need a temple or a garden to make a walk feel worth it, this is the wrong walk.

The locations are block numbers, not corners. You will sometimes circle a block before spotting the board, and a construction site can hide one for months.

Weekends are quieter for reading, but much of the office district's lunch trade is closed. Weekdays are the opposite.

The neighbourhood associations show their old names best at the Kanda Matsuri, but the full festival runs only in odd-numbered years, in May. The last one was in May 2025, so the next is expected in May 2027. Its dates have not been announced yet.

If you only have one day

This is a half-day. Pair it with Akihabara or Jimbōchō.

  1. Kanda Station, west exit. Walk to Kaji-chō 1-7, then 2-7 and Kanda Kaji-chō 3-3.
  2. Kanda Kon'ya-chō 41, then north to Kanda Tachō 2-4.
  3. Kanda Sudachō 1-8 for the market plaque, then Kanda Awajichō 2-8 for Renjaku-chō.
  4. Cross Shōheibashi. Read the Hatago-chō plaque at the east end.
  5. Up the slope: Soto-Kanda 2-3, 2-5, then Kanda Myōjin.
  6. Ochanomizu Station. If you still have light, walk on to Jimbōchō for Sarugaku-chō 2-3. If you're running late, drop it.