Archaeological site

Ohaguro Ditch Wall Remnant

Address: Near 4-33-12 Senzoku, Taito City, Tokyo
Area: Tokyo, Japan
Districts: Asakusa

Hours: No official visiting hours are published; this is an outdoor roadside remnant.
How to visit: The remnant is beside a parking lot/roadside. There is no sign or explanatory panel, so it can be difficult to locate.
Hours: About 5–15 min

Why it is worth the detour

Yoshiwara was once encircled by the broad, foul-water Ohaguro Ditch, a physical barrier designed in part to obstruct escape. A small section of dark stonework and the abrupt changes in ground level near the former gate are identified locally as remnants of that boundary, though the attribution is not completely certain.

This site features a small section of dark stonework believed to be part of the Ohaguro Ditch, which once encircled Yoshiwara as a barrier. Its historical significance lies in its role in the area's past as a physical boundary.

What else is close by

The nearest places we have written up, with straight-line distance from here.

100 m
Gojukken Road and the Koshodo Site
The surviving S-shaped approach concealed the interior of Yoshiwara from travelers on the embankment. Here the young publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo opened Koshodo, selling and publishing guidebooks that catalogued the quarter and eventually turning Yoshiwara gossip, fashion and personalities into mass media.
150 m
Mikaeri Yanagi
Customers departing Yoshiwara were said to pause beside this willow and look back regretfully, giving it the name “Looking-Back Willow.” The present tree is a later replacement and has been moved from its original position beside the Sanya Canal, but it remains the quarter’s most evocative farewell marker.
150 m
Yoshiwara Park and the Daimonjiro Site
The park occupies the former grounds of Daimonjiro, one of late Yoshiwara’s great high-ranking brothels. Its open footprint gives an unusual sense of how enormous a prestigious establishment could be before fires, earthquake destruction and postwar redevelopment erased the buildings.
250 m
Nakanomachi Street
This ordinary-looking road follows Yoshiwara’s former central ceremonial avenue. Courtesan processions advanced along it in towering footwear, while temporary cherry trees were planted for spring displays—an elaborate theatrical landscape erected inside a district whose women were tightly confined.
300 m
Ichiyo Memorial Museum
The museum preserves Ichiyo’s draft of “Takekurabe,” her shop ledger and a model reconstructing the neighborhood beside Yoshiwara. The model makes the vanished landscape unusually legible: her tenement faced toward the quarter’s ditch, walls and emergency gate.
300 m
Yoshiwara Shrine
This small shrine combines five Inari shrines that once guarded the entrance and corners of the enclosed pleasure quarter; Yoshiwara Benzaiten was later added as a sixth deity. Courtesans prayed here for protection and professional success, making it one of the few surviving institutions shaped by the women of Yoshiwara themselves.