The Setagaya Boroichi market has been running since its origins as a rakuichi — an open, tax-free market — some four hundred years ago, and it still occupies the same streets in winter, stalls selling worn cloth and old tools under the cold sky. This continuity is not performed nostalgia; it is simply how Setagaya has always conducted its business, quietly and at street level. The ward sits in the southwest of the Tokyo metropolis, its southern edge traced by the Tama River and the wooded escarpment of the Kokubunji Cliff Line, where springs still surface between the roots of old trees.
The residential character runs deep here — roughly nine-tenths of the land is zoned for housing — and yet the texture shifts dramatically by station. Shimokitazawa is dense with secondhand clothing shops and small theaters packed into narrow lanes. Sangenjaya preserves postwar alley-market geometry even as Carrot Tower rises above it. Futako-Tamagawa carries a different weight entirely, anchored by the Tamagawa Takashimaya Shopping Center, the country's first suburban shopping complex of its kind. Meanwhile, in Sakura-Shimmachi, twelve bronze figures from the Sazae-san comic strip stand along the pavement, a quiet acknowledgment that the strip's creator, Hasegawa Machiko, once lived and worked in these streets.
Older presences persist without announcement. In the schoolyard of Sakura Elementary School, a great evergreen oak has stood for around four centuries, designated a natural monument by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. At Zenyoji temple, a kaya tree of even greater age gives the temple its informal name. The Otaba family residence, a designated cultural property, still stands in the Setagaya neighborhood. These things are not attractions so much as evidence — of a place that has accumulated time without making a spectacle of it.
Where to stay
A day is rarely enough.
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What converges here
9 in this ward. 290 within 25 km of the ward office.
- Setagaya City Local Museum
- Saita Museum
- Showa Women's University Koyo Museum
- Hasegawa Machiko Art Museum
- Setagaya Art Museum
See the nearest 25
- Kagawa Archives & Resource Center
- Gotoh Museum
- Setagaya Literary Museum
- Toshio Kashio Memorial Museum of Invention
- Japanese Folk Crafts Museum
- Museum of Modern Japanese Literature
- Shoto Museum of Art
- Toguri Museum of Art
- Bunkamura Museum of Art
- Bunkamura
- Suginami Historical Museum
- Tokyo Anime Center
- Museum of Imaginary Narrative Arts
- Ueshima Museum
- Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
- NTT InterCommunication Center
- Meguro Museum of Art
- Meguro Parasitological Museum
- Ōta Memorial Museum of Art
- Kokugakuin University Museum
- Onko Gakkai Hall
- Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
- Meiji Jingū Hōmotsuden
- Yamatane Museum of Art
- Yoku Moku Museum
Distances are straight-line from the municipal office. Each website was checked in September 2026. Some locations © OpenStreetMap contributors.
- Hosoi Kotaku Grave
- Oba Family Residence (Tokyo, Setagaya-ku, Setagaya)
- Oba Family Residence (Setagaya, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo)
- Sangenjaya
- Futako-Tamagawa
- Shimokitazawa
- Shimokitazawa
- Meidaimae
- Kyodo
- Seijogakuenmae
- Chitose-Karasuyama
- Komazawa-Daigaku
- Sakura-Shimmachi
- Yoga
- Chitose-Funabashi
- Shimo-Takaido
- Shimo-Takaido
- Soshigaya-Okura
- Sakurajosui
- Umegaoka
- Sangenjaya
- Kitami
- Oyamadai
- Todoroki
- Gotokuji
- Kaminoge
- Daitabashi
- Higashi-Matsubara
- Kami-Kitazawa
- Rokkakoen
- Kuhombutsu
- Okusawa
- Setagaya-Daita
- Shoin-Jinjamae
- Kamimachi
- Ikenoue
- Shin-Daita
- Yamashita
- Wakabayashi
- Higashi-Kitazawa
- Setagaya
- Miya-no-Saka
- Matsubara
- Nishi-Taishido
- Futako-Tamagawa
- Meidaimae