During the Edo period, much of the area was part of the tenryō territory in Musashi Province controlled directly by the Tokugawa shogunate, but administered through various hatamoto.

During the Bakumatsu period, the area offshore Kanazawa was an anchorage for the American black ships under command of Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853 and 1854.

In 1887, Itō Hirobumi and a group of political scholars completed the final drafts of the Meiji Constitution while secluded in an inn in Kanazawa.

A large railway carriage factory was established in Kanazawa Ward in 1946 by the Tokyu Corporation on the site of a former Imperial Japanese Navy Technical Center.

Kanazawa Ward is largely a regional commercial center and bedroom community for central Yokohama, Kawasaki and Tokyo.