Ajanta, Tokyo

Why you should experience Ajanta in Tokyo, Japan.

Ajanta is a foundational South Indian restaurant where Kojimachi's international history, Jaya and Sujata Murti's family cooking, the Indian independence movement and nearly seven decades of uncompromised spice work converge through one of Tokyo's most consequential Indian kitchens.

Set along NTV-dori near Bancho Chuo-dori and just steps from Kojimachi Station, the restaurant carries the Murti family's South Indian cooking into a district where Ajanta became a gathering place for Indian residents after its earlier move to Kudan. Jaya Murti's recipes rely on whole spices ground and combined for individual preparations, continuing techniques developed when cloves, cinnamon and other essential ingredients were sufficiently scarce in Tokyo that he searched traditional medicine shops to obtain them. Chicken, mutton and keema curries preserve three preparations associated with the restaurant's formative years, with the chicken curry retaining the home recipe that first astonished Sujata Murti. The result is a Kojimachi restaurant where the Murti family's South Indian inheritance and exacting spice work preserve a culinary lineage extending deep into postwar Tokyo.

What you should know about Ajanta.

Ajanta is best known for the Murti family history connecting South Indian home cooking in Tokyo with the Indian independence movement surrounding Subhas Chandra Bose. Founder Jaya Murti came to Japan on January 1, 1940 after his elder brother Rama Murti, formerly secretary to the King of Nepal, summoned him to study at Tokyo Institute of Technology; Jaya had already graduated from technical college in Bangalore and worked as an electrical engineer. Rama had first encountered Japan during a 1932 journey home from the World Conference of Religions, returned to Tokyo, established a trading company and married Japanese interpreter Yoko Sakai, later named Geeta. Subhas Chandra Bose appointed Rama chairman of the Japan branch of the Provisional Government of Free India, placing the brothers inside the wartime independence movement and support network for the Indian National Army. After Bose died following an August 18, 1945 plane crash in Taiwan, the Japanese military brought his cremated remains to Tokyo, where Rama and Jaya received them and divided their safekeeping between their residence and Renkoji. Jaya married Geeta's younger sister Atsuko in 1947; she later took the name Sujata Shanta Murti, and her first encounter with Jaya's family-style chicken curry supplied the culinary impetus for the restaurant they developed. Their Asagaya coffee-and-curry operation grew into a 120-seat Kudan restaurant in 1961, where scarce imported spices sent Jaya through shops selling traditional medicinal ingredients in search of cloves and cinnamon; after the Indian Embassy moved nearby, Ajanta also became a social gathering place for Indian residents. The restaurant moved to Kojimachi in 1984, and the portion of Bose's remains kept by the Murti family was taken to India in 2005 by Harvard historian and Netaji Research Bureau chairman Sugata Bose. Jaya, Rama, Sujata and Subhas Chandra Bose give Ajanta a history in which South Indian food in Tokyo emerged from a family already entwined with some of the most consequential Indo-Japanese relationships of the twentieth century.

Chicken curry carries that family history into the bowl through a bone-in chicken leg, coconut milk, onion and a substantial spice mixture that produces heat without sacrificing the sweetness of the onion or richness of the meat. Mutton curry shifts toward a deeper meat character, then keema breaks the texture into minced meat, preserving the trio of curries carried forward from Ajanta's formative years. Sambar introduces lentils and vegetables, and rasam sharpens the sequence through the thinner, spice-driven profile of the South Indian soup before bhatura brings fried bread into direct contact with the curries. Tandoor heat supplies another route through breads and roasted meats, with the oven maintained at working temperature for extended periods to preserve consistency across service. Ajanta keeps the Murti family's cooking recognizable through coconut, lentils, meat, whole spices, fried bread and tandoor heat, preserving the pronounced flavors that Sujata first wanted Japanese diners to encounter.

How to fold Ajanta into your trip.

Ajanta works as the restaurant anchor for an afternoon tracing Kojimachi and Bancho through Buddhist sculpture, Edo Castle engineering and the human consequences of twentieth-century war.

Begin at Hanzomon Museum, where Shinnyo-en's Buddhist art collection places a Seated Mahāvairocana attributed to Unkei beside Gandharan reliefs depicting episodes from the Buddha's life. Museum director Tsutomu Yamamoto first encountered the Mahāvairocana in 2003 and published his attribution to the Kamakura master the following year, establishing the sculpture as one of the collection's central works. Continue to Chidorigafuchi Moat, where a natural defensive feature helped determine the placement of Edo Castle before the Tokugawa expansion incorporated its steep banks into the fortress system. Some 140 cherry trees now follow the 700-meter greenway, including Somei-Yoshino, the late-Edo hybrid that became Japan's predominant cultivated cherry. Conclude at Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery, established by the Japanese government in 1959 for unidentified Japanese servicemen and civilians who died overseas during World War II. Its Hexagonal Hall contains a five-ton ceramic coffin fired at 1,700 degrees from stones gathered across major battlefields, enclosing a gilt-bronze urn presented by Emperor Shōwa. The progression moves from Hanzomon Museum's Unkei-attributed Buddhist sculpture through Chidorigafuchi Moat's role in Edo's defenses into Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery's commemoration of overseas war dead, revealing religious, military and memorial histories embedded around the Kojimachi home of Ajanta.

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