Tokyo

Asakusa at Night

The gates stay lit until eleven and the day-trip crowds leave at six. Two hours in between are the best time to be at Senso-ji, and almost nobody uses them.

The great lantern of the Hozomon gate lit at night, red against black sky — Asakusa, Tokyo · November 2024

Senso-ji takes about twenty million visitors a year, and almost all of them come between ten and four. The temple grounds never close, the gates and the pagoda are floodlit until around eleven at night, and from about seven the whole place is quiet enough to hear your own footsteps on the stone.

This is the single easiest upgrade to a first trip to Tokyo: go at night instead.

At a glance

Grounds: Open at all hours. The main hall closes at 5pm, the grounds do not
Lighting: Gates, pagoda and main hall lit until about 11pm
Best hours: Seven to ten. Earlier is busy, later the lights go off
Getting there: Asakusa station on the Ginza, Asakusa and Tobu lines
Cost: Nothing. The temple charges no admission

The gate first

A huge red paper lantern hanging in a temple gate, lit from inside at night — The lantern at the outer gate is four metres tall and weighs about 700 kilograms. At night you can stand under it alone.Asakusa, Tokyo · November 2024

The outer gate — Kaminarimon — is the photograph everyone has, usually with four hundred people in it. After eight, you will share it with a handful of couples and a few people on their way home.

The shopping street, shuttered

A long covered shopping arcade at night with shutters down and lanterns lit overhead — The Nakamise stalls close between five and seven. The painted shutters are a sight in their own right.Asakusa, Tokyo · November 2024

The two hundred-odd stalls of Nakamise-dori are a crush by day. By night they are closed, and their shutters carry a painted scene that only exists when the shops are shut — most visitors never see it.

If you want the stalls open and the crowds thin, the compromise is a weekday at about half past nine in the morning.

A temple colonnade lit at night with autumn maples beside it — November, around nine in the evening.Asakusa, Tokyo · November 2024

The inner gate and the pagoda

Detail of a temple gate at night showing hanging lanterns and carved beams — The detail that daylight flattens: lacquer, gold leaf and five centuries of repairs.Asakusa, Tokyo · November 2024

A five-storey pagoda lit at night beside a temple gate — The pagoda is a 1973 reconstruction in concrete. It photographs better than it reads on paper.Asakusa, Tokyo · November 2024

Stand with the inner gate behind you and the pagoda to your left, and almost every frame works. Bring something to rest the camera on — a phone against a railing is enough — because the light is low, warm and uneven.

What else is open

Not much, and that is the point. A few bars and ramen counters behind the temple, the river two minutes away with the Skytree on the far bank, and the last trains around midnight.

Make an evening of it: the river cruise from the pier beside the bridge runs into the early evening and finishes near Odaiba, which turns a temple visit into a two-hour route across the city.

If you want the kimono photograph

Rental shops around Asakusa dress you, do your hair and keep your clothes until closing, which is usually six. That means the kimono photographs have to happen in daylight, in the crowd — so do the rental in the morning, return it at five, and come back after dinner for the empty version.