While Hongō and Koishikawa had been part of the 'high' city, they never became as posh as such neighborhoods as Akasaka and Azabu.

From the Meiji era onward, Hongō's main feature was Tokyo Imperial University. In 1889 the university, which was in fact an amalgamation of older schools of medicine and Western learning (rangaku), opened campus on the old grounds of the Maeda family mansion. The red gate is a reminder of this past. Hongō became the home of academics and the more elite students. Koishikawa was rather bourgeois and intellectual, though it also had several industrial parts.