Kaneyasu
かねやす · Kaneyasu
- Ward
- Bunkyo
- Price
- Free (exterior only)
- Hours
- Ground-floor shop no longer tr
- Getting there
- Hongo-sanchome Stn right outside
- Founded
- 1730
- After the 1730 fire, magistrate Ooka Tadasuke ruled that buildings south of this shop
- The founder made his fortune on a tooth powder and set his brother up in business
- It held the same corner for nearly four centuries
We do not republish copyrighted photographs. Use the links below to see the actual venue.
Obvious to locals, invisible to visitors
There is a simple reason guidebooks leave this out: to the people who live here it is too obvious to be worth explaining.
After the 1730 fire, magistrate Ooka Tadasuke ruled that buildings south of this shop must have tiled roofs while those north kept thatch. The line became the felt edge of Edo, preserved in a senryu verse still displayed on the shopfront.
The founder made his fortune on a tooth powder and set his brother up in business; the two shops later went to court over which was the original. Ooka ruled that one write its name in kanji and the other in kana — which is why the Hongo shop is spelled かねやす.
It held the same corner for nearly four centuries, but the ground-floor shop has been closed since around 2021. The building and sign remain — visit it as a marker of Edo's boundary rather than as a shop.
What it is
Bunkyo is a ward of universities, slopes and quiet residential streets. Prices have been corrected by hand — raised, but with visible reluctance to look like they were raised. Cream soda looks deeper in person than in photos, and the glassware differs from shop to shop. A rainy weekday is the sweet spot — the crowd thins dramatically. Leave large bags in a station locker; there is not much room inside. It would be a waste to stop at just this one — there is more of the same density within five hundred metres.
What to order
Why locals keep coming
It photographs well: the lighting and palette run exactly counter to current trends, which makes it stand out. Nobody hurries you along — a kind of slack that has vanished from the chains.