Kanda, Tokyo

Kanda is an area in north eastern Chiyoda, Tokyo in Japan. It forms a circle around about 30 neighborhoods. Kanda was a ward prior to 1947. When the 35 wards of Tokyo were reorganized into 23, it was merged with Kōjimachi to form the modern Chiyoda.
Kanda, together with Nihonbashi and Kyobashi is the core of Shitamachi, the original downtown center of Edo-Tokyo, before the rise of newer secondary centers such as Shinjuku and Shibuya.
It is home to the Kanda Myojin (Shinto) shrine, devoted to the ancient rebel Taira no Masakado, who led an uprising against the central government during the Heian period with the aim of establishing himself as "Shinnō" (New Emperor) of an eastern Court. In the Edo period, the shrine's festival was one of the three most famous in the city. It is also home to the "Mausoleum of Confucius at Yushima", a temple dedicated to Confucianism.
A popular Japanese franchise, "Zenigata Heiji", from the literature related series by Kodô Nomura, features a fictitious police patrolman (the title character) whose beat is Kanda. Near the end of every show, Heiji fells the cruel villain by throwing a coin at him.