Tokyo's Secret Places

GO TOKYO, the city's official travel guide, calls Nezu-jinja Shrine 'arguably one of the most photogenic places of worship in Tokyo' — a fair claim, given its torii-gate-lined pathway, lush greenery, and koi ponds in the heart of the quiet Yanaka and Nezu neighborhood.

Founded roughly 1,900 years ago according to legend, the shrine was rebuilt on its current site in 1706 by order of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, the fifth Edo-period shogun, and modeled after Nikko's famous Tosho-gu Shrine. Many of its original Edo-period features survive today as designated Important Cultural Properties.

Each spring, more than 100 varieties of azalea bloom across the shrine grounds, drawing a dedicated festival crowd — but on an ordinary day, the torii-lined path to the secondary Otome Inari shrine stays remarkably peaceful.

Yanaka Cemetery is the kind of place that sounds like an odd recommendation until you actually visit: a genuinely peaceful, park-like space managed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, surrounded by small temples and populated, by local reputation, with a healthy number of resident cats.

Wander its pathways and you'll pass the graves of Shibusawa Eiichi and numerous other painters, authors, actors, and politicians from the Meiji era (1868-1912) — a genuine cross-section of modern Japanese history, laid out with none of the solemnity a Western visitor might expect from a cemetery visit.

The street running through its center, Sakura Dori ('Cherry Blossom Street'), bursts into pink and white bloom each spring, drawing a quiet but devoted crowd of photographers and neighborhood walkers rather than tour groups.

According to legend, a 17th-century lord named Ii Naotaka was caught in a sudden thunderstorm near this temple when a cat beckoned him inside, saving him from the worst of the weather. In gratitude, Naotaka dedicated the temple to his clan — and the maneki-neko, Japan's famous 'beckoning cat,' is said to trace its origin to this exact story.

Today, the temple's small Shofuku-den pavilion is surrounded by hundreds of maneki-neko figurines of every size, left by visitors hoping for good fortune — an oddly moving sight precisely because of how modest and unpolished the whole display feels.

Despite being the birthplace of an image found in nearly every Japanese shop and restaurant, Gōtoku-ji itself remains a working Sōtō Zen temple in a quiet residential pocket of Setagaya, with none of the commercial feel its own legend might suggest.