The Red-Eyed Girl of Kita-Ikebukuro(北池袋), A Record of Searching for a Source in an Alley Beside the Tracks

Kita-Ikebukuro.
In Japanese, 北池袋.

To someone unfamiliar with Tokyo, it sounds like part of Ikebukuro. That’s not wrong. It really is close to Ikebukuro. But when you stand in front of the station, the atmosphere feels a little different.

Even though it’s right next to a major downtown area, the surroundings of the station show low residential houses, small shops, and narrow streets first. A place where everyday noise is closer than destination signs. In the evening, the sound of shutters closing comes first, and the lights in the houses beside the tracks turn on one by one.

I’ll note this first.

Kita-Ikebukuro Station is a small station on the Tobu Tojo Line. Its predecessor was Tobu Horinouchi Station, opened in 1934. After wartime damage, suspension, and closure, it reopened in 1951 under the current name, Kita-Ikebukuro Station. It’s an old station, but not the kind of old station that becomes a tourist spot. It’s just a neighborhood station. Someone boards and gets off every day, and someone else passes by.

I first saw this story as a re-quoted fragment from an old Japanese post.

The title was generally 「北池袋の赤い目の少女」—The Red-Eyed Girl of Kita-Ikebukuro.

But I couldn’t find the original.