å宿
Harajuku
(first post town, more at ārest spot on the plainā)

I get emails about the blog. Not a shitload, but I get them from time to time. However, itās rare that I get blindsided by an email.
That said, I love getting blindsided by emails, so letās check this out.
I recently moved to Japan and Iām living in Yoyogi. I spend a lot of time in Harajuku. Because Iām studying Japanese now Iām interested in the kanji for Shinjuku and Harajuku. Youāre article on Shinjuku was amazeballs and it got me thinking. But I can only find information on Yoyogi and Shinjuku. I searched your website and canāt find anything about Harajuku. Do you have a plan to write about Harajuku? Love the blog. Looking forward to your next article! |
I was outraged! I mustāve written about Harajuku 100 thousand times at least.
Well, OK, not 100 thousand times, but I know Iāve written about Harajuku at least 100 times. And I set out to prove this reader wrong, goddammit.

But She was 100% Correct
I searched my own site like crazy, convinced that Iād covered the subject before. After all, itās such a simple one; I knew I had to have written about it! But after a good 15 minutes of scavenging my own work for a single article about Harajuku, I realized that Iāve mentioned Harajuku and the surrounding areas many times, but Iāve actually never written about the etymology of Harajuku itself.
Dear reader, I stand corrected, and this glaring omission is going to be remedied today ā right freaking now. Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention[i].
.
As for some related articles, you might want to check later:
- What does Yoyogi mean? (near)
- What does Nerima mean? (horse connection)
- What does Meguro mean? (horse connection)
- What does Aoyama mean? (near)
- What does Shinjuku mean? (typical post town, drinking & whoring)
- What does Nogizaka mean? (related to Meiji Shrine)
- What does OmotesandÅ mean? (near)
- What does Takeshita-dÅri mean? (near)

First Letās Look at the Kanji
å | origin, source, beginning; field, plain |
宿 | inn, post town |
At first glance the word å宿 Harajuku looks like it means āfirst post town,ā but its actual etymology is āpost town on the plains.ā Youāll see what I mean in a minute.
Like many place names in the KantÅ area, we donāt get a lot of solid information about this place until the Kamakura Period[ii]. Prior to this period elite culture had flourished in KyÅto and western Japan under the imperial court. KantÅ cities like Kamakura or (god forbid) Edo[iii], were nothing before the rise of samurai culture in the East under the ęŗę° Genji Minamoto clan[iv]. With their rise in the East, came a rise in literacy in the East and much better record keeping.

What Little We Know
Itās said that the éåč”é Kamakura KaidÅ Kamakura Highway going from ēøęØ”å½ Sagami no Kuni Sagami Province[v] to å¤§å· ÅshÅ« (roughly modern 岩ęē Iwate-ken Iwate Prefecture) had a post town in the area. But, if youāve read my article about Shinjuku, donāt get any big ideas. This “town” wasn’t much more than a scattershot collection of farms just barely subsiding on their (luckily) fertile land. Until quite recently, this was the boondocks.
Specifically, it seems to have been a å®æé§ shukueki relay station[vi] for horses. The KantÅ area was famous since time immemorial for horse rearing. The highlands near modern Harajuku seem to have been horse grazing areas in the 11th Century. The area was referred to as a å hara field/meadow, so å宿 Harajuku literally meant āfield inn.ā
But I want to emphasize that it was basically just a horse relay station. This wasnāt a place to eat, sleep, take a bath, and get your dick wet. For the casual traveler in this area, you were lucky to find a little shelter from the elements and a clean dirt floor to sleep on. There wasnāt even a proper village here for most of its existence.

I mentioned the rise of the Minamoto clan in the east, and usually we talk about ęŗé ¼ę Minamoto no Yoritomo the first Kamakura shÅgun. But today weāll talk about an earlier family member, ęŗē¾©å®¶ Minamoto no Yoshiie also known as HachimantarÅ.[vii] During the å¾äøå¹“åę¦ Gosannen Kassen Gosannen War[viii] which was fought in the 1080ās, Yoshiie set up a camp in this area. Today this day in ē„å®®åļ¼äøē® JingÅ«mae Ni-chÅme 2nd block of JingÅ«mae there is a hill called å¢ęå Seizoroi-zaka which means āhill where troops are mustered.ā The hill is also known as ęŗę°å Genji-zaka Genji Hill ā Genji, of course meaning āthe Minamoto clanā (but you already knew that).

In the Edo Period, the high grounds were home to daimyÅ residences and high ranking samurai, while the sides of the hills went to low ranking samurai. The lowlands were fields for growing rice and other types of farming. Keep in mind, this area was on the outskirts of the shÅgunās capital. There really wasnāt much action out here at all.

So What is Harajuku Today?
Today, Harajuku is kind of a cultural clusterfuck. 15-20 years ago, the bridge leading from åå®æé§ Harajuku Eki Harajuku Station to 代ć ęØå ¬å Yoyogi KÅen Yoyogi Park (in front of ęę²»ē„å®® Meiji JingÅ« Meiji Shrine) was the spot that saw ļ½ŗļ½½ļ¾ļ¾ļ¾ļ½° kosuprÄ cosplay evolve from a hobby to a kind of freaky anime-based exhibitionism[ix]. Photographers, tourists, and foreign gamers/anime fans began descending upon the area to experience Japanese cosplay firsthand or even try to participate in the emerging cosplay culture. As cosplay became more mainstream and otaku culture changed, the Japanese ļ¾ļ½²ļ¾ļ½°reiyÄ ālayers (slang for cosplayers) disappeared from Harajuku and āthe bridgeā came to be populated by foreigners copying a 15 year old, outdated practice. The police cracked down on the crowds of foreign cosplayers, but sometimes you can still see a few foreigners hanging out posing for pictures.
Harajuku is also known as a kind of hair salon mecca. In addition to famous hair salons there are also many small boutique shops. The area was traditionally famous for its street fashion, but Gwen Stefani made the area stupid and to the best of my knowledge these days itās mostly tourists (both international and from the Japanese countryside).

Architecturally speaking, Harajuku Station is interesting because the building dates back to 1901 and it looks like a typical station of the time. Unfortunately, at the time it was build this area was pretty undeveloped and the station can barely handle the amount of traffic it gets. Itās just wall to wall people on the weekends and national holidays. Another interesting aspect of the station is a separate pair of train tracks and platform for the å¾”å¬ćåč» o-meshi ressha emperorās private train[x]. The imperial family uses the tracks to visit Meiji Shrine at å¾”ę£ę o-shÅgatsu the New Year holiday because it leads to a super-secret backdoor.


Which brings me to Meiji Shrine. Itās a big shrine dedicated to the ę治天ē Meiji TennÅ Meiji Emperor of whom long term readers will know Iām not a particularly big fan. That said, the shrine is quite beautiful and definitely worth a visit. If you go on ęåć®ę„ Bunka no Hi Culture Day, you can see an event called ęµé馬 yabusame which is where people dress up like samurai and do mounted archery. Itās pretty fucking cool and I highly recommend it to everyone. Culture Day is on November 3rd which, incidentally, was originally the Meiji Emperorās birfday.

Also in the area, though technically not in Harajuku, is ę±é·ē„社 TÅgÅ Jinja TÅgÅ Shrine. The shrine is dedicated to ę±é· å¹³å «é TÅgÅ HeihachirÅ who was supposedly Japanās most decorated naval officer. I donāt know a lot about the dude, but apparently his shrine was partially built as an āeff youā by the Imperial Navy to the Imperial Army. The army had erected a shrine to their hero, the general ä¹ęØåøå ø Nogi Maresuke in Akasaka, so not to be outdone, the navy set up this shrine. Itās actually a really beautiful spot and itās popular for weddings because of its photogenic traditional garden. Iāve never served in the military, but I know there are rivalries among the branches, I guess this one got us a scenic city retreat. Not bad.

Alright. So in conclusion, I hope you’ve all enjoyed my take on Harajuku. A lot of people have a lot of opinions – both positive and negative, both reality and fantasy – but the history of the area and its etymology are pretty much straight forward.
As always, thanks for reading to the end and thanks for your support.
Next on the agenda, I’m finally getting around to my Yamanote Line series.If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check my Åedo Line series. It’s gonna be hardcore, so I hope you’ll join me for what will literally be a wild ride!
__________________
[i] Iād much rather update my blog than slice open my own belly, which is what samurai bloggers used to do when they were wrong.
[ii] We could roughly say the 12th century, but itās easiest to think of this as the first shift of power away from KyÅto in the west to the KantÅ region. Samurai strongmen ruled in the name of the western nobles in the east. The shift in power was a logical leap from stupid court politics to real martial control over fiefs.
[iii] What does Edo mean? What? You thought I didnāt have an article about Edo? lol
[iv] ęŗę° Genji is essentially a nickname for ęŗę° Minamoto-shi. The kanji is the same, itās just more common to read it as Genji. Itās the same with the 平家 Hei-ke which is shorthand for 平家 Taira-ke. Again the kanji are the same and the meaning is the same: the Taira clan (well, technically āfamily,ā but same thing).
[v] This area was located in central and western ē„å„å·ē Kanagawa Ken Kanagawa Prefecture. For the purposes of this article, itās a reference to Kamakura ā the capital of the Kamakura ShÅguns.
[vi] If that word é§
eki sounds familiar, it is. The modern word for train station is é§
eki. The kanji was originally é© eki and the radical 馬 uma horse. Before trains it referred to relay station for changing horses, just as the modern term āpost officeā originated from places where messengers āpostedā their horses.
[vii] Also known as å
«å¹”太é HachimantarÅ. å
«å¹” Hachiman is the god of war and ļ½å¤Ŗé ātarÅ is a suffix of a boyās name. Hachiman was the tutelary ē„ kami deity of the Minamoto clan. If youāve ever been to Kamakura, youāve probably visited the shrine é¶“å²”å
«å¹”å®® Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gÅ« which was built by the first shÅgun, Yoritomo. As a result of the Yoshiie and Yoritomoās devotion to this deity, it became the de factÅ tutelary spirit of all samurai.
[viii] This war is waaaaay beyond the scope of this article, but hereās the Wiki about it.
[ix] Now itās a fulltime job for some people, at least thatās what my Twitter feed leads me to believe.
[x] Yes, the emperor has his own train.
I think I knew about the Imperial train, but never thought to look for anything about it that I could see or photograph. Cool stuff. One more thing to add to my list.
You can clearly see it from the platform. I used to pass through Harajuku going from Shinjuku to Shinagawa every day and was always curious about it until I googled it and was like naruhodo!
I happened to stumble upon the Yabusame during Bunka-no-hi one year. Had no idea it was happening… was an awesome surprise for me. Meiji Jingu and yoyogi are such a nice break from the concrete of Tokyo. Though nobody mentions that those woods are packed to the tits with SPIDERS! The most evil yellow and black spiders you’ve ever seen, just waiting to jack all those unsuspecting cosplayers!
Haven’t had a run in with those spiders yet thankfully. But Japan is home to some unholy insects.