Shinjuku · the streets north of Shinjuku Gyoen · October
The Chili That Turned Shinjuku Red
Shinjuku Gyoen was a samurai estate, and the pepper grown around it carried the family's name into every soba stall in Edo. It died out, came back in 2010, and this month you can eat it within ten minutes of the garden gates.
Naitō tōgarashi 内藤とうがらしEdo-Tokyo vegetable since 2013Facts checked 11 October 2026
You have done Shinjuku Gyoen: the ¥500 ticket, the lawn, the greenhouse, maybe the cherry-season queue. The garden's own name hides a second story. The post town that grew up along its north wall was called Naitō-Shinjuku (内藤新宿), and its cash crop was a chili, Naitō tōgarashi (内藤とうがらし). Nothing inside the garden tells you this. The chili itself is on sale a few blocks away, if you know which doors to try.
This is not a food-hall detour. What you give up is convenience: the stockists are a deli counter, a cinema kiosk, an office-building shop that shuts at weekends and a vending machine outside a newspaper agent. What you get is a Tokyo souvenir with a paper trail back to the 1800s, and a reason to walk the old post-town road instead of the mall corridors.
An estate, a post town, a crop内藤新宿 · Naitō-Shinjuku
The Naitō family were Tokugawa retainers. The project that revived the chili dates their grant of land here to about 1590 and puts it at roughly 200,000 tsubo. Later the family became lords of Takatō in Shinano, and the Shinjuku land became their shimoyashiki, the outlying estate. That estate is the garden you paid ¥500 to enter.
In 1697 a group of Asakusa townsmen petitioned the shogunate for a new post station on the Kōshū Kaidō, because the first stop out of Nihonbashi was Takaido, about 16 km away. Shinjuku City's chronology gives permission in 1698 and the start of business in 1699, on a strip cut from the north side of the Naitō estate; the National Diet Library gives 1698. The station was shut down in 1718 and reopened in 1772.
Chili followed the road. Farmers around the post town grew it to sell, and by the early 1800s the shogunate's gazetteer of Musashi province lists it as a local product under the name 内藤蕃椒, "Naitō chili". The late-Edo encyclopedist Kitagawa Morisada records the area around the Naitō estate as a noted chili district. The standard line, repeated by Japan's agriculture ministry, is that the ripe fields looked like a red carpet.
The post town was a strip sliced off the estate's north edge, so the places that sell the chili today sit on the same line the chili left by.
Why Edo wanted this one八房 · yatsufusa
Naitō tōgarashi is a yatsufusa (八房) type. The pods grow in clusters and point upward, above the leaves, which is why a ripe field reads as solid red from the road. It is a medium-heat pepper with large leaves that are eaten too, usually simmered.
Its market was soba. Street sellers of shichimi worked the chili into their patter: Edo wa Naitō-Shinjuku yatsufusa no yaki-tōgarashi, "roasted yatsufusa chili from Naitō-Shinjuku in Edo". Yagenbori, the Asakusa blender that dates itself to 1625, is said to have used roasted Naitō-Shinjuku yatsufusa in its early mix. Hold that claim loosely: the post town did not exist until the end of that century, so the name at least is later than the shop.
Two things ended it. The post town kept growing, so the fields were pushed west along the Kōshū and Ōme roads and then built over. And taste shifted to takanotsume, a hotter variety that took over as the standard Japanese chili. After 1868 the estate went to the new government, and Shinjuku's chili farmers disappeared.
The chili lasted about as long as the post town had fields. The revival is the thin block at the far right.
How it came back内藤とうがらしプロジェクト
In 2008 a citizens' group studying Edo food found that Shinjuku once had a chili brand. The Naitō Tōgarashi Project started in 2010 under Narita Shigeyuki, a regional-development producer. According to the agriculture ministry's account, the team went looking for old yatsufusa seed, used chili drawings by the Edo polymath Hiraga Gennai as their reference, grew the plants out near Yatsugatake, and spent three years selecting until the line bred true in 2013. That year it was accepted as an Edo-Tokyo vegetable (江戸東京野菜) through JA Tokyo. In 2018 the name became a regional collective trademark.
The commercial crop is grown by about ten farms in Tokyo (the ministry's figure, 2021), not in Shinjuku. What Shinjuku grows is pots. The project lists eleven ward primary schools, several high schools and universities, and a chili garden in Toyama Park. In November 2024 more than a thousand children presented their chili projects on the lawn of Shinjuku Gyoen. Schools are where this vegetable actually lives.
Where to buy it取扱店 · stockists
The Shinjuku tourism association published a stockist list in January 2026. Prices on that list, before tax: Shinjuku shichimi ¥537, yuzu-koshō ¥713, the red ichimi and the black-and-red chili oil (黒紅辣油) ¥980 each. The oil was certified as a Shinjuku specialty in March 2026.
Where
Address
What to know
PLAY THE EARTH LABORATORY
新宿1-31-7 新宿御苑ダイカンプラザ102
Its own shop page gives 10:00–18:00, closed Sat, Sun and holidays. The widest range near the garden.
Shinjuku Musashinokan (新宿武蔵野館)
新宿3-27-10 武蔵野ビル 3F
An arthouse cinema; the kiosk stocks it. Open when the cinema is.
Imada Shimbunten (今田新聞店)
百人町1-23-2
A newspaper agent with a chili vending machine out front. About 2 min from JR Ōkubo Station (大久保駅).
GIFT SHOP TOKYO Mikke!
都庁第一本庁舎 45F 南展望室
In the south observatory of the Metropolitan Government Building.
Aeon Food Style / Daiei
西新宿5-1-1 · 荒木町23-4
Supermarkets with a dedicated shelf.
The list says stock differs by shop and sells out. None of these pages gave hours except where noted. If you are already on the west side for the pond story in our Nishi-Shinjuku piece, the observatory shop is the easy one.
At a counter with a wall of spice tins, ask: 内藤とうがらしの商品はどれですか (Naitō tōgarashi no shōhin wa dore desu ka).
Getting there: Shinjuku-gyoemmae Station (新宿御苑前駅), Marunouchi Line, for PLAY THE EARTH LABORATORY · Shinjuku Station (新宿駅) east side for the cinema
When: Processed products all year. Weekdays if you want the shop by the garden.
Reality check: Small shelves, Japanese-only labels. Phone 03-5367-9343 before a special trip to PLAY THE EARTH LABORATORY; a 2024 project list gives that number.
For the pepper on its own, buy 一味. In a 七味 the Naitō chili is sharing the tin with six other things.
Where to eat it this month2026年10月
October is chili month because the pods are red and because 4 October is promoted as Tōgarashi Day. In 2016 that meant a ten-day fair with about a hundred shops, potted plants on sale at Shinjuku Gyoen and events at the department stores. It no longer takes that shape. The project's notice for autumn 2026, posted on 7 October, is a scatter of smaller things:
Date (2026)
What
Where
7–20 Oct
About 20 side dishes and bento made with the chili
Isetan Shinjuku (伊勢丹新宿店), B1, the 旨の膳 deli
Sun 18 Oct, 10:00–16:00
Project booth selling the processed products at the ward festival, Fureai Festa. Goes ahead in rain, cancelled in storms.
Toyama Park, Ōkubo section (都立戸山公園 大久保地区)
Ongoing, end date not given
江戸甘辛チーズむすび, ¥390: rice cooked with the chili, sweet Edo miso, cream cheese, walnuts
NIGICHA, 新宿1-3-8, by Shinjuku-gyoemmae Station
Inside the garden, the café in the Information Centre beside Shinjuku Gate announced in April 2026 a beef bento served with yuzu-koshō made from the chili. Whether it is still on the menu in October could not be confirmed.
At the Isetan deli, where nothing is labelled in English: 内藤とうがらしを使ったお惣菜はどれですか (Naitō tōgarashi o tsukatta osōzai wa dore desu ka).
If you want the raw pods rather than a powder: 生のとうがらしはありますか (nama no tōgarashi wa arimasu ka).
Getting there: Isetan is at the old Oiwake fork, by Shinjuku-sanchōme Station (新宿三丁目駅)
When: The Isetan feature ends 20 October 2026. Isetan also ran a chili deli feature on 7–20 January 2026, so October is not the only window.
Reality check: A deli feature means take-away, priced like a department store. Plan a bench.
The honest part
It is mild. That is the variety's whole history: it lost to a hotter pepper. If you buy chili for heat, the ichimi will underwhelm you. What people who like it describe is aroma and a savoury edge, and that is easier to notice on plain soba than on anything rich.
Almost everything you can buy is processed: powder, paste, oil, noodles. Fresh red pods are an autumn item, and no counter could be confirmed as selling them this October. A 2024 project list named Isetan's B1 fresh market as a stockist; the January 2026 list does not.
You will probably not see the plant. Shinjuku Gyoen sold pots during the 2016 fair, but whether anything is growing or on display there now could not be confirmed. The fields are school planters and a park bed in Toyama, not a sight.
The shop closest to the garden is shut on the two days most visitors come. And there is no single fair to turn up to any more; a list from one year does not predict the next.
If you only have one day
A weekday half-day, Tuesday to Friday, on or before 20 October 2026. The garden is closed on Mondays. From October it opens 9:00–16:30, last entry 16:00, ¥500. Walking times below are estimates; check your map.
Shinjuku-gyoemmae Station. Walk to PLAY THE EARTH LABORATORY (新宿1-31-7). Buy the ichimi and one other thing.
NIGICHA (新宿1-3-8) for the chili onigiri, to take away. Its hours could not be confirmed; if it is shut, carry on.
Shinjuku Gyoen by Ōkido Gate. Go first to Tamamo-ike, the pond in the north-east corner, which was fed from the Tamagawa aqueduct when this was the Naitō grounds. Eat on a bench.
Cross the garden to Shinjuku Gate. Look at the Information Centre café menu on the way out.
Walk north to Shinjuku-dōri, the old post-town road, and west to the Oiwake fork. Isetan B1, 旨の膳, for the chili dishes.
Shinjuku Musashinokan, 3F, for the cinema kiosk. Shinjuku Station is next door.
Running late? Drop the cinema. If you can only come on Sunday 18 October, skip the first stop and take the project's booth in Toyama Park instead.
The route runs the same way the fields retreated: from the estate's gate westward, ending where the two highways split.