池袋

A pond in a bag, or a bag-shaped hollow? The ward hedges: its monument is not called the birthplace of the name, only 'the pond connected to it'. The older gazetteer describes low ground folded like a pouch.

Toshima Ward will tell you about Marui-ike, the round pond that fed the Tsurumaki River, and that the name may have come from it. Note the may. The monument they put up is not called the birthplace of the name — it is called the pond connected to the name, which is a careful thing to call a monument. The older account in the Edo-period gazetteer says something different: the village sat high, the paddies lay only to the northeast, and the ground there dipped into a shape like a bag. Not a bag-shaped pond. A bag-shaped hollow. The station itself stands on high ground — about 33 metres by the national survey's elevation data — and the land steps down toward the northeast, exactly where the old account puts the paddies.

Marui-ike, source of the Tsurumaki River, once lay west of the station. Both pond and river are gone — filled in and culverted.