The empty Dewa-zaka slope stretched toward Shinanomachi without a single soul in sight

Dewa-zaka Slope in Minami-Motomachi, Shinjuku — Dewa-zaka Slope

When you hear the word "slum", the first thing that comes to mind might be Dharavi in Mumbai, India, which was the setting for the movie Slumdog Millionaire, or Smokey Mountain in the Philippines. Certainly, there are no slums in Tokyo today. But they used to exist. The Samegahashi area between Yotsuya and Shinanomachi stations was one of them.

The area around the current JR Samegahashi Street guard has always been a low swampy area with a poor environment, and in the Edo period (1603-1868) it was an Oka-basho, a place where prostitutes and brothels operated illegally. In the Meiji era (1868-1912), poor people from farming villages gathered in the area and formed a slum. It seems that so many poor people lived in this area that leftover food from the military academy dormitory in nearby Ichigaya-Honmuracho was sold in this area.

Samegahashi, which was called one of the three poorest slums along with Shiba-shin-ami and Shimotsuya Bannen-cho, is now long gone. Walking around the area, there are no vestiges of the slum anywhere. Only the history of the town on display at the Samegahashi Sekitome Inari shrine proclaimed that the area had once been a slum. Dewa-zaka, which stretches from the bottom of the valley of Samegahashi, gently ascends toward Shinanomachi without a trace of a trace.

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