Why you should experience Tomigaya in Tokyo, Japan.
Tomigaya is a cultured enclave where western Tokyo's former military landscape, postwar international history, independent commerce and proximity to Yoyogi Park converge beyond Shibuya's denser commercial core.
Positioned between Yoyogi-KamizonochΕ, Yoyogi-Hachiman, and Kamiyamacho, the neighborhood climbs west from Yoyogi Park through compact residential streets threaded with restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops and small creative businesses. Yoyogi Park gives the eastern edge an unusual breadth, opening the quarter toward woodland and lawns on ground that passed from an Imperial Japanese Army parade field to Washington Heights and the 1964 Olympic Village. Yoyogi Hachimangu crowns the neighboring rise with a religious history beginning in 1212 and archaeological evidence of Jomon settlement, extending the surrounding area's chronology far beyond its twentieth-century development. The result is an enclave where Yoyogi Park, Washington Heights, the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and Yoyogi Hachimangu place contemporary neighborhood commerce against centuries of settlement and successive reinventions of western Shibuya.
What you should know about Tomigaya.
Tomigaya is best known for developing beside the vast Yoyogi tract whose changing uses repeatedly altered the surrounding district during the twentieth century. The Imperial Japanese Army established the Yoyogi military parade ground in 1909, and on December 19, 1910, Captain Yoshitoshi Tokugawa flew a Farman aircraft there during Japan's first officially recognized powered-aircraft flights. American occupation authorities later converted the site into Washington Heights, a housing complex for United States military personnel and their families that remained beside Tomigaya through much of the postwar period. Tokyo's selection for the 1964 Summer Olympics brought another major change as Washington Heights was returned for Olympic use and much of the former housing area became the athletes' village. The metropolitan government opened Yoyogi Park in 1967 on portions of the former military, occupation and Olympic ground, creating a 54-hectare public landscape immediately east of Tomigaya. Three radically different uses within six decades transformed the neighborhood's eastern boundary from military space into an international residential compound, an Olympic site and one of Central Tokyo's largest parks.
The western side of Tomigaya carries a much older chronology through Yoyogi Hachimangu and the archaeological site preserved within its wooded grounds. Excavation in 1950 uncovered the remains of a Jomon-period dwelling, postholes and Kasori E-type pottery associated with settlement approximately 4,500 years ago, followed by construction of a reconstructed pit dwelling in 1951. Yoyogi Hachimangu traces its shrine foundation to 1212, when Arai Geki Tomoaki established a sanctuary after receiving a revelation of Hachiman and invited the deity from Tsurugaoka Hachimangu in Kamakura. Enjuin, connected with the Kishu Tokugawa family, later contributed approximately 6,000 tsubo of land that supported relocation of the sanctuary to its present position. The precinct also preserves an 1840 votive painting depicting Empress Jingu, Emperor Ojin and Takenouchi no Sukune alongside woodland containing chinquapin, camphor, zelkova and ginkgo. Jomon habitation, Kamakura-period worship and Tokugawa patronage give the heights adjoining Tomigaya a historical depth that predates the military and metropolitan landscapes along its opposite edge by millennia.
How to fold Tomigaya into your trip.
Tomigaya works as the anchor for a day tracing Japanese modern art, postwar cultural exchange and the layered public landscape surrounding western Shibuya.
Begin at The Shoto Museum of Art, opened by Shibuya in 1981 in a building designed by Seiichi Shirai, whose circular central void, bridges and inward-facing galleries gave the institution a distinctive architectural presence among Shoto's residential streets. Shirai died in 1983, placing the museum among the final public works of an architect whose career ranged from postwar residences to major cultural commissions. Continue to Embassy of New Zealand Tokyo, where the diplomatic presence in nearby Kamiyamacho extends the international history surrounding Tomigaya beyond the former Washington Heights occupation community. Japan and New Zealand established diplomatic relations in 1952, the year the San Francisco Peace Treaty entered into force, beginning a formal relationship subsequently developed through political, economic and cultural exchange. Conclude at Yoyogi Park, where the 1909 military parade ground, Tokugawa's 1910 aviation flight, Washington Heights and the 1964 Olympic Village preceded the metropolitan park that opened in 1967. The park's surviving Olympic associations and expansive lawns complete a sequence in which architecture, diplomacy and successive international uses transformed the districts immediately surrounding Tomigaya. The progression moves from Seiichi Shirai's late architectural career through Japan and New Zealand's postwar diplomatic relationship into ground successively occupied by the Japanese military, American families and Olympic athletes, revealing the international forces that reshaped Tomigaya's eastern surroundings during the twentieth century.
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