Ikebukuro Station, seen from Sunshine 60 building

is a commercial and entertainment district in

Toshima is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the eight central wards of the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Located in the northern area of Tokyo, Toshima is bordered by the wards of Nerima, Itabashi, and Kita in the north and Nakano, Shinjuku, a ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. Toshima ward offices,

Ikebukuro station Ikebukuro Station ( ja, 池袋駅, ) is a major railway station located in the Ikebukuro district of Toshima, Tokyo, Japan, shared by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East), Tokyo subway operator Tokyo Metro, and the two private railway operat ...

, and several shops, restaurants, and enormous department stores are located within city limits. It is considered the second largest

adult entertainment The sex industry (also called the sex trade) consists of businesses that either directly or indirectly provide sex-related products and services or adult entertainment. The industry includes activities involving direct provision of sex-related ...

district in Tokyo.

Transportation

At the center of Ikebukuro is the train and subway station, a huge urban gathering shared by the

JR East The is a major passenger railway company in Japan and is the largest of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST or JR East in English, and as in Japanese. The company's headquarters are ...

lines, the

Seibu Ikebukuro Line The is a railway line of the Japanese private railway operator Seibu Railway. It originates at Ikebukuro Station, a large railway junction in north-western Tokyo, extending to northwest suburbs as far as Tokorozawa, Saitama, and nominally term ...

and the

Tōbu Tōjō Line The is a 75.0 km suburban railway line in Japan which runs from Ikebukuro Station in Toshima, Tokyo to Yorii Station in Yorii, Saitama, operated by the private railway operator Tobu Railway. Its official name is the , but it is referred to ...

. It is one of the main commuter hubs in the western Yamanote area of Tokyo.

Ikebukuro Station Ikebukuro Station ( ja, 池袋駅, ) is a major railway station located in the Ikebukuro district of Toshima, Tokyo, Japan, shared by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East), Tokyo subway operator Tokyo Metro, and the two private railway operat ...

is the third-busiest station in Japan, and the world.

Cultural attractions

Around the station are the Seibu and Tōbu

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...

s. Seibu, written with the characters for , is on the east end of the station and Tōbu, written with the characters for , is on the west end. East of the station, on the site of

Sugamo Prison Sugamo Prison (''Sugamo Kōchi-sho'', Kyūjitai: , Shinjitai: ) was a prison in Tokyo, Japan. It was located in the district of Ikebukuro, which is now part of the Toshima ward of Tokyo, Japan. History Sugamo Prison was originally built in 1 ...

, stands Sunshine 60, which was the tallest building in Asia at the time of its construction. Sunshine 60 contains Sunshine City, a large and popular shopping mall with various attractions including an aquarium, a

Pokémon (an abbreviation for in Japan) is a Japanese media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, founded by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures (company), Creatures, the owners of the trademark and copyright of the franchise. In terms of ...

Center and

cat café A cat café is a theme café whose attraction is cats who can be watched and played with. Patrons pay a cover fee, generally hourly, and thus cat cafés can be seen as a form of supervised indoor pet rental. "Cat café" has been officially rec ...

s. Adjacent to Sunshine City, on Meiji Dori, is what was previously called the Toyota Ikebukuro Building which housed a multi-floor

Toyota is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on . Toyota is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, producing about 10 ...

Autosalon Amlux showroom from 2000 to 2013. The building is now called Sunshine City Annex since 2019.

Otome Road is a name given to an area of Ikebukuro, Tokyo, Japan that is a major shopping and cultural center for anime and manga aimed at women. The area is sometimes referred to as Fujoshi Street, referencing the name given to fans of yaoi. Geography ...

, a center for

otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, particularly in anime, manga, video games, or computers. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in ''Manga Burikko''. may be used as a pejorativ ...

culture and shopping district for

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

and

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

aimed at women, is located nearby.

Marui is a Japanese multinational retail company which operates a chain of department stores in Tokyo as well in other major Japanese cities. They are best known for their women's fashion and accessories, which are aimed at the 25–35 age range. ...

and

Don Quijote Don, don or DON and variants may refer to: Places *County Donegal, Ireland, Chapman code DON *Don (river), a river in European Russia *Don River (disambiguation), several other rivers with the name *Don, Benin, a town in Benin *Don, Dang, a vill ...

also have department stores in the area. The principal electronics retailer in Ikebukuro is

Bic Camera is a consumer electronics retailer chain in Japan. Currently, it has 41 stores in Japan. Bic Camera has a 50% ownership of former rival store Kojima and full ownership of computer store chain Sofmap. As of 2018, Bic Camera is the third larges ...

. There is a small pleasure district located in Nishi-Ikebukuro, similar to

Shinjuku is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is a major commercial and administrative centre, housing the northern half of the busiest railway station in the world (Shinjuku Station) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, the administration ...

Kabukichō Kabukichō ( ja, 歌舞伎町, , ) is an entertainment district in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Kabuki-chō is the location of many host and hostess clubs, love hotels, shops, restaurants, and nightclubs, and is often called the "Sleepless Town" (, , ...

. The old village of Ikebukuro stood to the northwest of the station. Most of the area on which modern Ikebukuro is built was historically known as

Sugamo is a neighborhood in Toshima, Tokyo, Japan. It is home to , a shopping street popular among the older generation, earning it the nickname "Granny's Harajuku." It lies at the crossing point of the JR Yamanote Line and National Route 17. Availab ...

. In the Taishō and Shōwa periods, the relatively low land prices attracted artists and foreign workers, who lent a somewhat

cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan may refer to: Food and drink * Cosmopolitan (cocktail), also known as a "Cosmo" History * Rootless cosmopolitan, a Soviet derogatory epithet during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1949–1953 Hotels and resorts * Cosmopoli ...

atmosphere to Ikebukuro. Until October 1, 1932 when Toshima ward was established, the area was an independent

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

of . Ikebukuro is the second largest

district in Tokyo.

Etymology

The

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

for Ikebukuro literally means "pond bag" (池袋). Outside the west exit of

near an entrance to the Fukutoshin Line is a small plaque explaining how the area used to have multiple lakes, hence the name. There is a small statue of an

owl Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...

located near the center of the city called , meaning ''pond owl statue''. It is a play on words, as "owl" (梟 ''fukurō'') is pronounced similarly to "bag" (袋 ''fukuro''). The owl statue has become a famous meeting place along the lines of the statue of

Hachikō was a Japanese Akita dog remembered for his remarkable loyalty to his owner, Hidesaburō Ueno, for whom he continued to wait for over nine years following Ueno's death. Hachikō was born on November 10, 1923, at a farm near the city of Ōdate, ...

located outside

Shibuya Station is a railway station in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, operated jointly by East Japan Railway Company (JR East), Keio Corporation, Tokyu Corporation, and Tokyo Metro. With 2.4 million passengers on an average weekday in 2004, it is the fourth-busiest c ...

Tokyo Chinatown

Ikebukuro is home to many

ethnic Chinese The Chinese people or simply Chinese, are people or ethnic groups identified with China, usually through ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, or other affiliation. Chinese people are known as Zhongguoren () or as Huaren () by speakers of s ...

who arrived in the 1980s, leading to a variety of Chinese goods and services being provided in the district, which are popular among tourists interested in

Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the world's oldest cultures, originating thousands of years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia and is extremely diverse and varying, with customs and traditions varying grea ...

. However, the Ikebukuro Chinatown is smaller and less populous than Yokohama's Chinatown just to the south of Tokyo.

Education

Public elementary and junior high schools are operated by the Toshima Ward Board of Education. is in Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro itself is zoned to Ikebukuro Elementary School and Nishi Ikebukuro Junior High School (西池袋中学校), the latter in . Ikebukuro Junior High School (池袋中学校) is in and does not serve Ikebukuro proper. Public high schools are operated by the

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Board of Education The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Board of Education (東京都教育委員会 ''Tōkyō-to Kyōiku Iinkai'') is the board of education in Tokyo, Japan. The board directly manages all of the public high schools in all 23 special wards, the Western T ...

Rikkyo Ikebukuro Junior and Senior High School is private boys' junior and senior high school in Ikebukuro, Toshima, Tokyo. History Bishop Channing Moore Williams established Rikkyo Junior High School in Tsukiji, Tokyo in 1896. The original building was destroyed by the Great Kantō earthqu ...

, a private secondary school, is in the area.

Organized crime

The

Kyokuto-kai The is a yakuza organization based in Tokyo, Japan.

( yakuza syndicate) is headquartered in Ikebukuro."2010 Police White Paper Chapter 2 : Furtherance of Organized Crime Countermeasures"
2010, ''

National Police Agency National Police may refer to the national police forces of several countries: *Afghanistan: Afghan National Police *Haiti: Haitian National Police *Colombia: National Police of Colombia *Cuba: Cuban National Police *East Timor: National Police of E ...

In popular culture

* Ikebukuro is the setting of the Japanese manga and TV drama ''

Ikebukuro West Gate Park , usually referred to by its initials IWGP, is a series of urban mystery novels by Ira Ishida. It was adapted into a drama television series directed by Tsutsumi Yukihiko. The television drama then got a manga adaptation. An anime televisio ...

''. * Ikebukuro is the setting of the Japanese

light novel A light novel (, Hepburn: ''raito noberu'') is a style of young adult novel primarily targeting high school and middle school students. The term "light novel" is a ''wasei-eigo'', or a Japanese term formed from words in the English languag ...

, and

series ''

Durarara!! , often shortened to ''DRRR!!'', is a Japanese light novel series written by Ryohgo Narita, with illustrations by Suzuhito Yasuda. ''Durarara!!'' tells the story of a dullahan working as an underworld courier in Ikebukuro, an internet ...

''. * "Ikebukuro" is the name of a 16-minute-long track from the

Brian Eno Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948) is a British musician, composer, record producer and visual artist best known for his contributions to ambient music and work in rock, pop an ...

album, ''

The Shutov Assembly ''The Shutov Assembly'' is the thirteenth solo studio album by British musician Brian Eno, released on 10 November 1992 on Warner. One of Eno's ambient albums, it was reissued in 2014 with a second disc with bonus tracks. Overview The alb ...

''. * Ikebukuro is also represented in the multimedial project by King Records '' Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle''

References

External links

Tokyo travel

JapanVisitor
{{Authority control Districts of Toshima Neighborhoods of Tokyo