A neighbourhood often suggests its own point of entry. You might plan an esoteric approach, arriving on foot to examine how surrounding districts connect, but usually the simplest method suffices: begin at the neighbourhood’s named station and let it be the gateway.

In the case of Shirokane, I have almost never arrived that way. For one reason or another, I have tended to enter from the north, crossing on foot from Minami-Azabu. It is some distance from either of the area’s stations, but in my personal geography of Tokyo, that boundary marks the start.

Accidental albeit, there is a historical logic to this. Shirokane takes its name from a wealthy landholder of the Ōei period (1394–1428), whose fortune in silver gave rise to the area’s name: shiro (白), meaning white, and kane (金), meaning metal, understood as silver. Affluence, in one form or another, has been close to its identity since.

Yet no rail line passed through Shirokane until 2000, when the Tokyo Metro Namboku Line and Toei Mita Line opened stations at Shirokane-Takanawa and Shirokanedai. Until then, the neighbourhood remained set apart, and I suspect that this may have suited it. It was not somewhere one simply dropped into. The area has been described as a “landlocked island”—distant despite being in company, never quite connected.

In a sense, that is why I am fond of Shirokane. That enclosed character, owing to the past absence of access, still persists. So, let's arrive on foot and see where the streets will, or will not, lower their walls.