Okachimachi: Inside Tokyo's Jewellery Quarter

Walk out of the east side of JR Okachimachi Station, cross under the elevated tracks into Ueno 5-chome, and within a hundred paces the shop signs begin to read like a geology lesson: Ruby Street, Sapphire Street, Coral Street, Diamond Avenue. One published count puts roughly two thousand jewellery businesses in the few blocks between here and Akihabara, and describes the Ueno and Okachimachi area as home to about eight in ten of Japan's jewellery shops, wholesalers and makers. Okachimachi is not a pretty district. It is a working one, and that is exactly why a collector should know it.

This article belongs to a set of five on why so much of the world's jewellery, gold and fine watches came to rest in Japan. The feature, Why the World's Treasures Came to Rest in Japan, sets out the argument. Its companions walk Ginza and its watch, open the drawer in Kept in the Box, and follow the metal itself in Gold in Japan. Okachimachi is where much of that metal is set, polished, mended and weighed.

Foot soldiers and altar fittings

The name comes first. In the Edo period the land south-east of Shinobazu Pond was given to the okachi, lower-ranking samurai of the okachi-gumi whose duties included escorting and guarding the shogun on his outings. Each family received a plot of about 100 tsubo, roughly 330 square metres, with a house of about 20 tsubo on it, and a stipend of 70 bales of rice. The streets kept the name long after the guards had gone; when the railway station opened on 1 November 1925, it simply borrowed the name of the districts of Okachimachi and Naka-Okachimachi around it.

The metalwork came with the temples. Ueno sat at the edge of Edo's great temple precincts, and an account published by nippon.com records that the district was home to many metalworking artisans who made the metal fittings of Buddhist altars for temples and shrines, Kan'ei-ji on the Ueno hill and Senso-ji in Asakusa among them. A craftsman who can chase a lotus petal in gilt copper for an altar can, with a change of customer, set a stone in a ring. In the Meiji period, as Western dress and Western jewellery arrived, those same workshops began making and finishing accessories, and the trade grew from there.

From watches in the market to a town of jewellers

The modern quarter was shaped by the war and what followed it. Ueno and Okachimachi were burned in the air raids of 1945, and the stalls that gathered on the cleared ground became a black market under the railway arches, the origin of Ameyoko, whose name recalls the candy and American goods sold there in the late 1940s and 1950s. One district guide notes that the trade in that market ran largely to watches. Local traders organised what they handled into watch and jewellery wholesale associations, and those associations dominated Japan's jewellery industry until the early 1990s, when the district's weight shifted toward retail.

In 1987 the jewellers formed a promotion group of their own, Jewelry Town Okachimachi, known by its initials JTO, and the area grew into one of the largest specialist districts in the country. It also became international in a quiet way. Rajendra Jain, who comes from Rajasthan and opened his gem business here in 2000, estimates that Indian families have traded in Okachimachi for about sixty years, and that perhaps a hundred of the district's businesses are Indian-run. His own stones come from Brazil, Africa and Myanmar and are cut at his workshop in India before they reach Tokyo, a single supply line that crosses three continents to arrive in one narrow street.

What the workshops make and mend

Behind the glass fronts, Okachimachi is a chain of trades. A ring may be cast in one building, have its stones set in a second, be polished in a third and appraised in a fourth, and the district's own descriptions list retail, wholesale, processing, repair and appraisal side by side. Toyo Keizai counted more than a thousand companies doing one or other of these jobs. For a collector, the useful point is that the skills a fine piece needs over its life are concentrated within a few minutes' walk of each other.

The services a visitor can ask for are practical ones. Several shops offer resizing, repair and pearl restringing, and some will remake an old piece, turning a ring that no longer fits into a pendant. Pearls are everywhere: Akoya strands from Japan's own pearl farms sit beside freshwater pearls, and the difference in value between the two is large enough that it is worth asking which is which before admiring a price. Our own guide, Pearls Explained: Akoya, South Sea, Tahitian and Freshwater, shows how to tell them apart by lustre and nacre.

A map drawn in gemstones

The quarter is small enough to learn in an afternoon. Four stations serve it: JR Okachimachi on the Yamanote and Keihin-Tohoku lines; Naka-Okachimachi on the Hibiya Line, about 140 metres to the east; and Ueno-Okachimachi on the Oedo Line and Ueno-Hirokoji on the Ginza Line, both about 150 metres to the west. The jewellery streets lie mostly on the eastern side of the tracks.

• Coral Street (Sango-dori) runs south from the station's north exit, where jewellers mix with ordinary shops.
• Ruby Street follows the east side of the station and is lined almost entirely with jewellers and gem shops.
• Sapphire Street sits two blocks east of the railway, on the quieter edge of the quarter.
• Diamond Avenue and Pearl Street lie toward the south and east, with Jade, Emerald and Garnet lanes threaded between them.

North of the station, Ameyoko runs along the tracks toward Ueno with its spice shops, dried fish and imported clothes; our walk through Ueno: Museums on the Hill and a Market Beneath the Tracks covers it in full, and The Tokyo Atlas places the whole neighbourhood on the city's map.

Reading the stamps in the windows

Almost every piece in an Okachimachi window carries a small stamp, and reading it is the first skill a collector needs here. Japanese makers stamp the fineness themselves with a letter and a number: K18 means 750 parts of gold in every thousand, the most common gold standard in Japanese jewellery, while Pt900 means 90 per cent platinum. Japan is the largest market for platinum jewellery in the world, which is why Pt900 and Pt950 appear far more often here than they would in London or New York, where Pt950 dominates. Beside the maker's stamp, a few pieces also carry the Japan Mint's own hallmark, a small sun motif with the metal and fineness, which is voluntary and therefore a mark of extra care rather than a legal requirement. The full system is set out in Japanese Gold and Platinum Marks: K18, Pt900 and the Mint Hallmark.

Stamp	Metal content	What it tells a collector
K18	750 parts gold per thousand (75%)	The standard of Japanese fine jewellery, bridal sets and watch cases
K24	Pure gold (999)	Softer and deeper in colour than K18, so less common in everyday rings
Pt900	900 parts platinum per thousand (90%)	Japan's everyday fine-jewellery platinum, rarely seen abroad
Pt950	950 parts platinum per thousand (95%)	Kept in Japan for the finest pieces; the international standard elsewhere
SV925	Sterling silver (92.5%)	The grade of most fine silver jewellery
Sun motif with fineness	Tested by the Japan Mint	An independent, voluntary confirmation of the stamped grade

Silver deserves its own reading. The heavy silver of Chrome Hearts, which Japanese collectors have pursued for decades, carries its own marks and weights, explained in Chrome Hearts: Hollywood Silver and the Tokyo Stores; Tiffany's sterling, which we hold in our Tiffany room, changes its stamps by era, as Tiffany Silver: Hallmarks, Eras and the Heart Tag Line shows. Gold jewellery from the great Paris houses, such as the pieces in our Cartier room, is read the same way, stamp and maker's mark together; costume jewellery needs another eye again, and our field guide to Chanel earrings and brooches reads the backs of pieces that carry no fineness stamp at all.

Visiting with good manners

Okachimachi rewards a visitor who remembers that it is a place of work. Many businesses serve trade buyers first, and many wholesalers do not serve walk-in customers; a sign at the door usually says whether the public is welcome, and it is courteous to read it before stepping in. Because the trade keeps office rhythms, a good number of shops close at weekends and on public holidays, so a weekday visit between late morning and early afternoon finds the most doors open. Opening hours run broadly from about 10:00 or 11:00 to 19:00, with closing days that vary from shop to shop.

Bring a passport if you hope to shop tax-free, since the paperwork cannot be completed without it, and bring cash, which smaller shops often prefer. Ask about sizing before you commit: returns and exchanges are rarely accepted in the quarter, and a ring that can be resized on the spot is better than one that cannot. Above all, handle pieces only when invited, on the tray or cloth offered, the way a Japanese jeweller would expect.

Five things few visitors know

• The station is named after bodyguards: the okachi were the foot soldiers who walked beside the shogun when he left the castle.
• The district's jewellers began as makers of altar fittings for Kan'ei-ji and Senso-ji, so the same hands served Buddhism before they served brides.
• Above a shop selling beans in the middle of Ameyoko, on the second floor, sits Tokudaiji, a temple to Marishiten, a guardian deity associated with strength and good fortune; it came through both the 1923 earthquake and the 1945 bombing.
• JTO, the district's promotion group, was founded in 1987, the year the quarter chose to present itself to the public under one name.
• Indian families have worked in the quarter for about sixty years, and one of them cuts stones from Brazil, Africa and Myanmar in India for Tokyo's setters.

Where the quarter fits

Okachimachi is the workshop end of a long story. Japan's appetite for gold reaches back to the mines of Sado and the koban coins of Edo, which Gold in Japan: From Sado to the Kihei Chain follows; its appetite for the finest watches and jewellery is on display a few stops south, along the avenue described in Ginza and the Watch. What links them is care, the habit of keeping the box, the papers and the cloth that Kept in the Box describes. Published counts of the quarter's businesses disagree, ranging from about four hundred shops to two thousand, because some writers count storefronts and others count every firm upstairs; whichever figure is right, no other street in Japan holds so many hands that know how jewellery is made.

Frequently asked questions

Can anyone shop in Okachimachi?

Yes, at the many shops that welcome the public. Some wholesalers serve the trade only, and the door usually says so; read the sign before entering.

When is the best time to visit?

A weekday, from late morning to early afternoon. Many trade-facing businesses close at weekends and on public holidays.

How do I know a piece is real gold or platinum?

Read the stamp: K18 for 18-carat gold, Pt900 or Pt950 for platinum, SV925 for sterling silver. A Japan Mint sun mark is an extra, voluntary confirmation. Our guide to Japanese marks covers the details.

Can jewellery be repaired or resized there?

Yes. Resizing, repair, pearl restringing and remaking an old piece into a new form are all offered in the quarter; ask before you buy whether a piece can be sized.