South of the Chinzanso/Four Seasons Hotel on the Kandagawa -- where our walk finished last month -- Kagurazaka is a vibrant town named after its sloped main street, The Kagurazaka. This hilly area has a maze of lanes and short but steep hills, making it a thrilling adventure for urban walkers. In pockets formed by the complex topography, traditional shops and restaurants are clustered and the ambience is of the pre-war Kagurazaka red-light district. More recently, this area has become a favorite haunt for French expats and bistro-goers.
In the Edo Period, however, it was a predominantly samurai district, called Ushigome, and populated with hatamoto (bannermen) and gokenin (housemen), middle- to low-class samurai. They were descendants of warriors who fought with Tokugawa Ieyasu in establishing the Tokugawa regime in 1603. As the shogun's direct retainers, they subsequently served in various bureaucratic positions in the shogunal government at Edo Castle, living on the periphery of the outer moats at the castle's rear.
In the accompanying 1830s woodblock print by Hasegawa Settan, the stepped Kagurazaka street diagonally cuts across the picture, reaching the stone buttressed outer moat that can be glimpsed at bottom left. On the other side of the moat stood the Ushigome Gate, through which the samurai bureaucrats would make their way to their offices. Various levels of status are reflected in the sizes of the depicted homes -- from the crowded small roofs on the right to the more luxurious ones with wooded gardens (on the left). The steep-roofed building at the top is Zenkoku-ji, a popular temple affiliated with mighty Ikegami Hommon-ji (see this column Sept. 18, 2003).