Setagaya Business Square is a neighborhood in

Setagaya, Tokyo is a Special wards of Tokyo, special ward in the Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis in Japan. It is also the name of a neighborhood and administrative district within the ward. Its official bird is the azure-winged magpie, its flower is the Habenaria radi ...

. Its name appears frequently in traffic reports because the junction between the

Tōmei Expressway The is a national expressway on the island of Honshū in Japan. It is operated by Central Nippon Expressway Company. The expressway is designated as E1 under the "2016 Proposal for Realization of Expressway Numbering", because it parallels Na ...

and the elevated Shibuya branch (#3) of the

Metropolitan Expressway The is a network of tolled expressways in the Greater Tokyo Area of Japan. It is operated and maintained by the . Most routes are grade separated and have many sharp curves and multi-lane merges that require caution to drive safely. The spee ...

system is there. There is also a stop, Yōga Station, on the

Tōkyū Den-en-toshi line The is a major commuter line operated by the private railway operator Tokyu Corporation and connecting south-western suburbs of Tokyo and neighbouring Kanagawa Prefecture, with its western terminus of , to a major railway junction of western do ...

here. There is also a bus services (Tokyu Bus) and possible access to the area with numbers of buses. Two traffic cameras on top of the SBS tower overlook the junction, the Yōga toll gate, and other parts of the neighborhood.

History

In the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

, Yōga was a post-town on the Ōyama Kaidō, a road connecting

Edo Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...

and Ōyama Mountain in

Sagami Province was a Provinces of Japan, province of Japan located in what is today the central and western Kanagawa Prefecture.Louis-Frédéric, Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Kanagawa''" at . Sagami Province bordered the provinces of Izu Province, Izu ...

Derivation

The name comes from

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

root of the word "yoga". The

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

temple Shinpuku-ji chose the Sanskrit-derived appellation Yuga-san. The Sanskrit is also the root of the word "yoga" (योग→瑜伽→用賀).

Culture

Yōga is home to

Kinuta Park is a park in Setagaya, Tokyo. The total area is , about two-thirds of which () is grass. Kinuta Park is famous for its cherry blossom ('' sakura'') viewing. It has at least three varieties— Someiyoshino (photo), Yamazakura, and Yaezaku ...

, a broad green space established in 1957. The park is located 10 minutes from the Yōga Station and covers . Kinuta Park has sports facilities, including

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

fields, a

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...

court, and

swimming pool A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable Human swimming, swimming and associated activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built abo ...

s (25m and 50m, also a small pool for kids and diving pool). The

Setagaya Art Museum The is an art museum in Yōga, Setagaya, Tokyo. The museum, which opened March 30, 1986, houses a permanent gallery and mounts seasonal exhibitions. Structure The main building of the museum, a contemporary design by architect Shōzō Uchii, ...

, est. 1986, is located on a corner of Kinuta Park. The museum has a permanent collection with an emphasis on

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

, particularly the works of

Kineo Kuwabara was a Japanese editor and photographer, known for photographing Tokyo for over half a century. Kuwabara was born in Tokyo in 1913. He started taking photographs around 1931 with a Vest Pocket Kodak, but his interest increased as a result of an i ...

and

Kōji Morooka was a Japanese photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. ...

. Yōga is noted for its educational institutions, and is home to many primary, junior, and high schools. Perhaps the most significant of them all is Sakuramachi State Primary, which had biggest numbers of pupils in Setagaya-ku back in 1992–93 with more than 600 pupils. Yōga is also home to the all-girls Catholic Seisen International School.

Neighbourhood

Around the Yoga station is perhaps the most vibrant area of Yoga. It is a residential area after all and there are numbers of residential friendly facilities including large super markets (OK Store and Fuji supermarket) as well as smaller grocery stores, butcher, off-licence, fish shops, etc.

Education

Setagaya Board of Education operates public elementary and junior high schools. 1 and 2-

chome The Japanese addressing system is used to identify a specific location in Japan. When written in Japanese characters, addresses start with the largest geographical entity and proceed to the most specific one. The Japanese system is complex, th ...

are zoned to Sakuramachi Elementary School (桜町小学校). 3 and 4-chome are zoned to Kyosai Elementary School ( 京西小学校) and Yoga Junior High School ( 用賀中学校). Different parts of 1 and 2-chome are each zoned to Fukasawa Junior High School ( 深沢中学校) and Seta Junior High School (瀬田中学校).

References

* http://www.setagayaartmuseum.or.jp/

External links

* Setagaya Business Square Neighborhoods of Tokyo Setagaya {{Tokyo-geo-stub, Yoga, Tokyo