History of Fushimi: Meiji to the Present — Railways and Sake Brewing, the Reclamation of Ogura-ike, and Postwar Changes in Chushojima and Former Military Land

The appeal of Fushimi-Momoyama

Fushimi after the Meiji era is not simply an Edo-period port town that has survived unchanged. Canals and railways were built, the markets for its sake widened, and military facilities were established. In Chushojima, a new urban area formed between the railway station and the former pleasure quarter, and after the war the regulations governing business and the way buildings were used changed. To the south, at Ogura-ike, land reclamation that drained the water to create land was carried out, and the open water was transformed into farmland.

This article traces changes in transport, industry, and people’s work and daily lives from the aftermath of the 1868 war onward. Through its establishment in 1931 and later mergers, present-day Fushimi Ward came to include not only the former City of Fushimi but also distinct areas such as Fukakusa, Mukaijima and Daigo. We will look at each change while distinguishing where it took place. [31, 57]

In Meiji-era Fushimi, canals and railways were developed at the same time

The Battle of Toba-Fushimi in 1868 caused heavy damage to Fushimi’s town and its sake industry. During the reconstruction that followed, both facilities to supplement the existing water transport and new forms of land transport were developed. In 1894 the Kamogawa Canal was completed, connecting the Lake Biwa Canal with Fushimi. [2, 4, 31]

The following year, 1895, an incline was built at Sumizome. An incline is a facility that carries boats on an inclined track over a section where there is a difference in water level. It was not enough simply to dig canals that boats could navigate; a mechanism to overcome differences in height was also needed. [31]

In the same year, 1895, the Kyoto Electric Railway opened a line between Kyoto Station and Fushimi Kyobashi. According to Kyoto City’s guide to historic sites, the line connected at Kyobashi with steamboats bound for Osaka. Water transport did not become entirely unnecessary the moment the railway appeared; there were also journeys that combined trains and boats. [48]

Steamboats also made water transport itself faster

The competition between water transport and railways was not a process in which water transport, still using old boats, simply lost out. On the Yodo River, paddle steamers equipped with steam engines came into use in the Meiji era. These boats were propelled by turning waterwheel-like paddle wheels attached to the sides of the hull or elsewhere, and according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, they linked Hachikenya in Osaka with Fushimi in about 6 hours upstream and about 3 and a half hours downstream. Compared with the Sanjikkoku-bune (thirty-koku boats) of the Edo period, the upstream journey took roughly half the time. Mechanical power also came to sections that had relied on human labor to tow boats. [DXH010]

The trains of 1895 picked up passengers at Fushimi, where these steamboats arrived, and carried them into central Kyoto. The 4th National Industrial Exhibition, held in Okazaki that same year, was a major event showcasing industry and products from around the country. A route was also arranged to carry visitors who came by boat from Osaka onward from Fushimi by train. The boats, the trains and the crowds drawn by the exhibition were not unrelated events. [DXH022]

The Canal was not merely a waterway for boats either; it was a project that combined industrial power, water supply and hydroelectric generation. The same water served both as a route for carrying goods and as power to run machines. If you look at today’s waterfront and picture only the Edo-period port, the roles of the canals built in the Meiji era and of the use of electric power disappear from view. [DXH022]

Steamboat companies went through repeated fare wars and mergers

Faster boats did not necessarily mean a stable business. The rules for boat traffic between Kyoto and Settsu set by Osaka and Kyoto prefectures in 1876 restricted steamboat navigation at night and set the number of places where boats were allowed to call en route at 30. The convenience of stopping at many points along the river also meant a longer journey for passengers riding the whole route. Boat companies competing with the railways prepared new boats and facilities and also tried to attract passengers through their fares. [R2L016]

A 1986 study by Amano Kozo, who researched transport history at Kyoto University, and his colleagues notes that while low fares of 3 sen for a round trip were advertised, in 1885 the companies reached an agreement setting fares at 20 sen for first class and 15 sen for second class, with half fare for children aged 3 to 12. The bargain advertisements and the regular agreed fares are not figures under the same conditions. Then, in May 1887, the companies pooled their boats to establish Yodogawa Kisen (Yodo River Steamship), headquartered in Fushimi. However, new entrants and competition did not subside, and this company too was dissolved in March 1902. [R2L016]

This sequence of events shows that passenger water transport did not shrink solely because of competition with the railways; the boat companies also shared passengers and revenue among themselves, alternating repeatedly between cooperation and competition. Meanwhile, freight carried in bulk, such as coal, did not shift to the railways on the same terms as passengers. Whereas the Takase River carried firewood and charcoal, timber and daily necessities into central Kyoto, the Canal also carried goods that arrived from the Sea of Japan side via Lake Biwa, as well as coal from the Osaka side. Looking separately at the cargo and destinations of each waterway helps explain why the decline of passenger traffic and the continuation of freight water transport happened at the same time. [R2L002, R2L016]

The Misu Lock raises and lowers boats between two rivers with different water levels

The Misu Lock (Misu Komon), in Fushimi Ward, Kyoto, is a facility that raises and lowers boats between the Horikawa and the Uji River, which have different water levels, so that boats can travel between them. Because it uses the same mechanism as the locks of the Panama Canal, changing the water level between two gates to carry boats while they stay afloat, it is also called the “Panama Canal of Fushimi.” Today, boats are not operated through the gates into or out of the Uji River. [36] [93]

From Meiji navigation improvements to Taisho flood control

Johannis de Rijke, a Dutch civil engineer invited by the Meiji government, and others guided the Yodo River improvement works from 1874. The construction of “low-water channels,” which gather the flow into a fixed navigation channel even when the river is low, was work to secure enough depth for boats to pass. In addition to preventing floods, river works also aimed to maintain the navigation channels used to carry cargo. [90]

Meanwhile, major floods occurred in 1885, 1896 and 1917. The Yodo River improvement works of 1896–1910 included moving the confluence of the Uji and Katsura rivers from Noso to Yawata and separating the Uji River from Ogura-ike. Following the Great Taisho Flood of 1917, the supplementary Yodo River improvement works began the next year, 1918. Even under the same label of “river improvement,” the scope and purpose of the works differed from period to period. [90]

Protecting the port with levees closes off the boats’ entrance

The levee built along the right bank of the Uji River between Kangetsukyo and Misu, carried out from 1922, placed Fushimi Port on the inner side of the levee. While this protected the port and town from river flooding, it created a problem: boats could no longer pass directly between the Uji River and the port. Leaving the levee cut open would compromise flood protection, while keeping it closed would cut the port off from the river. [90] [32]

The Misu Lock, built at this entrance, was completed on March 31, 1929, about 3 years after construction began. Gates separate the Horikawa from the Uji River, and the water level in the section between them is adjusted only when boats pass through. It was a facility for maintaining both the levee and river navigation. [32]

Boats enter between two gates, and the water level is matched

The section of waterway between two gates that boats enter is called the “lock chamber” (koshitsu). A boat enters the lock chamber through the gate on the departure side, and once that gate is closed, it waits until the water level matches that of the river on the arrival side. When the levels match, the gate on the other side is opened, and the boat can proceed into the other river. The water level is raised when a boat goes from the lower side to the higher side and lowered when it goes the other way. [36]

At the Fushimi Incline, a carriage carrying a boat moved along an inclined track. At the Misu Lock, the boat stays afloat while the water level around it changes. Both are facilities that let boats overcome differences in water level, but they differ in whether the boat itself is carried over land on a track or raised and lowered in the water. [36] [31]

The lock chamber of the Misu Lock is 73 meters long and 11 meters wide. The gate chambers, where the gates are located, are 8 meters wide, which is not the same as the width of the lock chamber. The 16.6-meter-high towers were fitted with a mechanism that winds up the heavy steel gates with electric chains. Looking at the parts that divide the waterway together with the parts that move the gates also makes clear why the towers were needed. [32]

Even after the railways developed, the lock carried freight such as coal

In the year it was completed, more than 20,000 boats passed through the Misu Lock. The museum’s explanation also notes that it carried coal and other goods, and that improved river transport capacity was being sought in the suburbs of Kyoto City for military expansion. The lock was not built for tourism; it was a transport facility also tied to the industry and military affairs of the time. [32]

This record of use also shows that boats did not disappear as soon as the railways opened. Passenger travel, the transport of heavy freight and the connection with the canals of central Kyoto were not replaced by railways and roads at the same pace. The very fact that a large lock was completed in 1929 shows that there was still a need to maintain water transport in the early Showa era. [32]

Since freight transport ended, the facility and its museum have conveyed the port’s history

After the war, freight transport on the Yodo River declined as land transport developed, and traditional river transport came to an end in 1962. This does not mean, however, that every boat disappeared from the Yodo River; gravel-dredging boats and sightseeing boats on limited sections continued to operate afterward. On the Uji River, the water level fell as a result of river improvement works and the Amagase Dam, completed in 1964, and the Misu Lock was closed that same year. The end of freight transport and the closure of the facility for passing boats from the Horikawa to the Uji River were two separate stages. [R3I011, R3I014, R3I015]

In 2000, the facility was restored and renovated. The adjacent Misu Lock Museum explains how the water level is changed with a working model and an explanatory video, and also displays a model titled “Fushimi Port and the Town of Fushimi” along with historical panels. It is a place where you can see the relationship between the boats’ route and the port town, which is hard to grasp from the towers alone. Today’s Jukkoku-bune pleasure cruises differ in purpose from the former freight transport between Kyoto and Osaka, and they do not pass through the lock to navigate the Uji River. [36] [91]

Boats stopped using the Takase River and the Canal at different times

River transport on the Takase River, which linked central Kyoto with Fushimi, gradually lost its role because of the opening of railways and other factors, and it was abolished in 1920. However, the Takase River was not the only waterway heading north from Fushimi. The navigation route of the Kamogawa Canal and the Lake Biwa Canal, developed in the Meiji era, continued to be used after that. [R3I009, 31]

The Fushimi Incline, which overcame the difference in height between the Canal and Fushimi, was suspended in August 1943. River transport of that era on the Lake Biwa Canal, on the other hand, did not cease until 1951. As use declined with the development of automobiles and railways, the suspension of the facility for moving boats in and out of Fushimi and the end of river transport on the remaining sections took place at different times. [R3I018, R3I016]

For the Yodo River steamboats as well, the dissolution of the company and the disappearance of the boats were not the same event. The Yodogawa Kisen company, founded in 1887 by pooling the companies’ boats, was dissolved in March 1902, but the remaining boats passed through private hands and continued to operate. A 1986 study of water transport by Amano Kozo, Maeda Yasutaka and Nijikken Norio also traces how they were subsequently taken over by other operators. After the Keihan Electric Railway opened in 1910, the steamboats’ role shifted from passenger transport to tugboat work towing Japanese-style boats loaded with freight, and during the Taisho era their operations were gradually consolidated into that business. [R3I013, 48]

The cross-district railways that were never built, and the two-year City of Fushimi

In present-day Fushimi, the north–south railways linking Kyoto with Osaka and Nara stand out. In the early Showa era, however, there were also plans to cross Fushimi from east to west. The Shin-Keihan Yamashina Line was conceived to run from around today’s Hankyu Nishi-Muko Station through Koga, Jonangu and Fukakusa to Yamashina. A separate Keihan Rokujizo Line was planned to run from around Rokujizo via Ishida, Daigo and Yamashina toward Otsu, and it was connected to a scheme for an electric railway extending to Nagoya. [DXH018]

These plans were not realized because of the Showa Depression. Today’s route map is not the result of every route considered at the time having been built. Distinguishing the existing line from Chushojima via Rokujizo from the routes to Daigo and Yamashina that remained only plans reveals the difference between places that developed with the railway and places where a line was planned but no station was ever built. [DXH018]

Administrative boundaries changed as well. The City of Fushimi came into being in 1929 on the condition that it would accept a merger into the City of Kyoto. Becoming a city was also seen as an advantage in the merger negotiations, and in 1931 Fushimi was incorporated into Kyoto City together with Fukakusa Town, Daigo Village and others. Today’s Fushimi Ward is not an area that inherited only the former City of Fushimi. A sake-brewing town, a town with military facilities, farming villages and areas centered on temples were brought into a single administrative ward. [DXH022]

Railways and new markets allowed the sake industry to expand production

Fushimi had been brewing sake since the Edo period, but its growth as an industry was not steady. It fell into hardship under the shogunate’s restrictions on sake brewing and also suffered war damage at the end of the Edo period. Kyoto City’s historical overview explains that the completion of the entire Tokaido Main Line in 1889 allowed Fushimi to enter the Tokyo market, and that production had increased by around the time the Army’s 16th Division was stationed there in 1908. [4]

Even with the same access to groundwater, the amount of sake that could be produced varied depending on whether it could be transported to the places where it was sold and on where demand existed. The modern sake brewery district is not simply a place where Edo-period buildings happened to survive; it is also an industrial district that renewed its equipment and buildings as transport and sales expanded. The Okura Kinenkan (Okura Memorial Museum), housed in a sake brewery from 1909, and Fushimi Yumehyakushu, which occupies a former head office from 1919, are buildings from that era. [7, 38]

Changes in the number of sake brewers and differences in techniques such as year-round brewing (shiki jozo) and yumai-zukuri (melted-rice brewing) are explored in depth in Sake Brewing and Brewing Methods in Fushimi.

Banks and the commercial center also moved from the port to the station area

Changes in Fushimi’s commerce appear not only in the breweries’ production volumes but also in where banks were located and in land prices. In 1882, a Fushimi branch office of the Dai-Ichi Bank’s Saikyo branch was set up in Kasho-machi, and after it closed, the locally based Fushimi Bank was founded on the same site in 1888. Kasho-machi takes its name from the Kasho-za, which administered the system for boats on the Yodo River. Modern financial institutions, too, were initially located in the area where port trade was concentrated. [R2L008]

Suzuki Fumihiko, who studies regional finance and the history of towns, shows that in the 1888 Kyoto Prefecture Statistical Report the highest residential land price was in Naka-Aburakake-cho, and that by 1903 it was in Shimo-Aburakake-cho, near the streetcar stop. After the Keihan line opened in 1910, banks clustered on Otesuji. Fushimi Bank moved its head office to Furoya-cho in 1903, and in 1926, when it had become Kawasaki Bank, it relocated to the intersection of Otesuji and Naya-machi. This shows the commercial hub moving from near the boat landings to where the railway and the shopping streets meet. [R2L008]

On the 1957 roadside land price map from the postwar period, the stretch of Otesuji from Fushimi-Momoyama Station to the intersection with Naya-machi was the street with the highest roadside land price. Nichii opened in 1967, followed by Seiyu and Nagasakiya in 1968, and the Otesuji arcade was completed in 1971. The clustering of the railway station, banks, large stores and a shopping street where people could walk sheltered from the rain shaped the station-front commercial district as it is today. The stores mentioned here are historical records of store openings, not current business information. [R2L008]

Schools for local children were built on the sites of daimyo residences

Parts of the residential estates frequented by domain retainers at the end of the Edo period became school grounds in the Meiji era. The predecessor of Fushimi Itabashi Elementary School was Fushimi (伏水) No. 2 School, opened in 1872 on the site of the Owari domain residence. In the same year, Fushimi No. 3 School was founded on the site of the Tosa domain residence in Minamihama-cho, and it later became Fushimi Minamihama Elementary School. Land once used for daimyo stays and domain activities gained a new purpose: the education of children. [R2L009]

School numbers and names changed later on. Fushimi No. 2 School also went through names such as Fushimi-machi No. 1 Ordinary Elementary School and Fushimi No. 1 Ordinary Elementary School. The words “No. 1” or “No. 2” alone are not enough to treat schools from different periods as separate institutions, or to assume that a school had the same name from its founding. The school histories handed down at the schools record their grounds and buildings, subjects, number of classes and teacher transfers, conveying changes in the children living in the town and in the places where they were educated. [R2L009]

In 1889, Kii District Higher Elementary School was founded; it later became Fushimi Higher Elementary School and then Fushimi National School, leading to the postwar Fushimi Junior High School. Its related documents also include the histories of Fushimi Itabashi Youth School and other youth schools in the surrounding area. In an area where people gathered to brew and transport sake and to work at military facilities, different places of education were also provided according to age and period. [R2L009]

The army’s arrival in Fukakusa also reshaped roads and waterworks

Facilities including those of the 38th Infantry Regiment moved into Fukakusa in 1898, and the headquarters of the 16th Division was established there in 1908. A division is a large army organization that brings together several units. Land that had been rice paddies and fields was turned into barracks and drill grounds, becoming a place that housed many soldiers and supplied them with food and materials. Shidan Kaido, which linked Kyoto Station with the headquarters, and the Gundo (military road) that crossed it were roads for carrying people and goods to those military facilities. [DXH022]

Supporting the army’s population also required water. According to the history of the water supply in the Fukakusa Archives, demand grew in an area that relied on wells, and in 1909 the army built a waterworks that pumped water from the Uji River, treated it in sedimentation ponds at Okamedani and sent it to the military facilities. This later became the Momoyama Water Purification Plant. Separately from the groundwater known as brewing water for sake, a facility was established to distribute water continuously to a large group of people. [DXH017]

When the general water supply also became insufficient as factories and housing increased, Kyoto City was entrusted in 1938 with operating the military waterworks and made up the shortfall. In this way, a facility that began for exclusive military use was incorporated into the water supply used in residents’ daily lives. The relationship between military land and the urban area shows not only in site boundaries but also in connections such as roads and water supply. [DXH017]

In modern Chushojima, the kashizashiki business district and the people who worked there were controlled by regulations

The former pleasure quarter of Chushojima was opened in the Edo period in Higashi-Yanagi-cho and Nishi-Yanagi-cho. From the Meiji era onward, it was placed under business and residence regulations set by Kyoto Prefecture. According to a 2020 study by Takimoto Tetsuya, who examined the business regulations and tax burdens of Kyoto’s hanamachi, a “kashizashiki” was a business permitted on the nominal basis of renting out rooms (zashiki) for the business of prostitution. Kyoto Prefecture’s 1881 Regulations for the Control of the Kashizashiki Business designated Chushojima as one of the districts where the business was permitted. Shogi were required to register their business and not to live outside the designated districts. [47]

“Shogi” refers to women permitted to engage in prostitution under the licensed prostitution system, while “geiko” is a profession of entertaining guests at banquets with performing arts such as song, dance and music. In Kyoto, the two were sometimes found together in the same district. Takimoto’s study explains that the districts that prefectural statistics labeled “yukaku” (pleasure quarters) or “licensed kashizashiki districts” included both geiko and shogi. [47, 51]

The Kyoto Prefecture regulations examined by Takimoto also included shogi licenses, tags showing that a woman had been permitted to work, as well as periodic examinations and restrictions on residence and going out. In the licensed districts, including Chushojima, a system was established that, together with business permits, controlled the bodies and movements of the women who worked there. [47]

In the administrative statistics of the time, too, geiko and shogi were classified under separate items. In the Kyoto Prefecture Statistical Report covering 1935, Table 48 lists geiko and others, while Table 49 lists pleasure-quarter districts, kashizashiki, shogi, customers and so on. Both are tallied by police station jurisdiction, so the figures for the Fushimi police station cannot simply be read as the number of people in Chushojima. These tables confirm the categories used in the system and the geographic scope of what the statistics counted. [69]

Advance loans and flat-rate taxes became a burden on the workers

An advance loan (maegashikin) is money received in advance on the premise that it will be repaid from future earnings. Research on the labor of geiko and shogi in the modern era points out that such debts and business contracts restricted their freedom to quit the trade or to move. The form of contract also differed between geiko and shogi, and not all women worked under the same conditions. [47, 51]

The tax burden also had distinctive features. According to Takimoto’s study, under Kyoto Prefecture’s 1900 regulations, the levy (fukin) imposed on shogi themselves was a flat amount per person, set according to whether they were inside or outside the city. The miscellaneous tax on the geiko business, applied from 1931, was likewise a flat amount per person according to the grade of the business district. Kashizashiki operators were taxed in grades based on their annual sales, a different basis from the taxation of the working women themselves. Under this system, a fixed payment was required even when there were few customers. The study argues that, on top of repaying advance loans, such taxation placed a heavy burden on the workers. [47]

The income earned from the district’s sales was divided among the operators’ businesses, the workers’ living costs, debt repayment and tax payments. While boats and railways brought in many customers, the workers carried burdens that remained even in months when earnings were low. What the research shows is Kyoto Prefecture’s system and economic structure; individual incomes and living conditions varied.

After the station opened in 1910, Minami-Shinchi formed between the former pleasure quarter and the station

Keihan’s Chushojima Station opened in 1910. South of the former pleasure quarter, there had previously been wetlands and fields. In the early Showa era, development that raised the ground level and divided the land into lots progressed on the land between the station and Higashi-Yanagi-cho and Nishi-Yanagi-cho, and Minami-Shinchi took shape. Houses, eateries and shops selling alcohol lined the road from the station to the former pleasure quarter. [44, 48]

There is a large gap between the time the Edo-period pleasure quarter was established and the time the shopping street in front of the station was formed. Rather than lumping Minami-Shinchi together with the former pleasure quarter, distinguishing Higashi- and Nishi-Yanagi-cho, Minami-Shinchi leading to the station, and the land south of the tracks gives a more accurate understanding of how the urban area spread. Kiyoyama Yohei and Kanki Kiyoko of Kyoto University, who studied the Chushojima townscape from the perspective of architecture and urban planning, traced maps and land subdivision in a 2021 study and clarified these differences in origin. [44]

The railway also affected the flow of customers. Takimoto’s study shows that in Chushojima and elsewhere in the 1930s, increases in the number of passengers boarding at the stations corresponded with increases in the number of customers, and argues that the development of the railway network contributed to the expansion of the business. A town that had welcomed boat passengers in the Edo period also came to welcome customers arriving by rail in the modern era. [47]

Shinchi-yu in Minami-Shinchi stands on this street leading from the station to the former hanamachi. Kyoto City presents its building as one that conveys the Showa-era entertainment district. In addition, at the southern end of Horai Bridge there is a monument to a project that filled in part of the Uji River branch channel, which lets you trace the history of how land surrounded by rivers turned into an urban area. [48]

The reclamation of Ogura-ike turned open water and fishing grounds into farmland

South of Fushimi there was once Ogura-ike, a pond inhabited by carp, crucian carp, moroko and other fish. When river improvement works changed its relationship with the Uji River, its water quality deteriorated, and the reclamation project of 1933–1941 turned the pond into farmland. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 634 hectares of new farmland were created. It was a major change in land use, in which fishing grounds became farmland. [55, 56]

The loss of the pond also changed fishers’ rights and relations between villages

Before reclamation, Ogura-ike was surrounded by villages and fishers’ associations that held fishing grounds. The fishing tags explained in the article on the Edo period were a system that determined who took part in fishing and how the burdens were shared. The Uji City Historical Museum’s commentary on the documents argues that in the early Edo period Fushimi on the north shore led the fishery, later Imoarai on the west shore did so, and at the reclamation stage the drive of influential figures on the Ogura side of the east shore played a major role. Although they surrounded the same pond, the leading place and the main undertaking shifted over time. [R2L003]

The reclamation that began in 1933 cannot be summed up as a story in which everyone who caught fish simply became a farmer. Shares in fishing rights, the number of people who actually fished and the ownership of shoreline land were each separate relationships. Together with the technology of draining water to create farmland, it was a project that involved reorganizing the local community around the question of who would pursue new livelihoods on that land. [R2L003]

After the Anti-Prostitution Act took full effect in 1958, other activities continued in Chushojima

The postwar abolition of the licensed prostitution system and the full enforcement of the Anti-Prostitution Act in 1958 were not the same event. Even after the licensed system was abolished, there was a period when so-called akasen (red-line) businesses continued, in which prostitution took place under names such as kaseki, rooms rented to customers. The point at which Higashi-Yanagi-cho and Nishi-Yanagi-cho in Chushojima ceased to be an akasen district was the full enforcement of the act on April 1, 1958. [45, 51]

That date did not, however, mean that the area’s buildings and businesses all disappeared at once. In a 2026 study by Kiyoyama Yohei and Kanki Kiyoko, which traced changes in Chushojima’s drinking district through residential maps and building surveys, the kaseki recorded in 1957 had nominally become ochaya (teahouses) by 1960, and their number had also fallen. After that, conversions to inns, student dormitories and apartment buildings, and shifts to food and retail businesses, can be seen. [45]

The same study also identifies, on a 1978 map, cases in which several small eateries occupied former ochaya or nagaya (row houses) in Minami-Shinchi. This represents a shift from using a building as one establishment to dividing it among several establishments. Following the maps up to 2023 shows that rebuilding as housing and conversion to parking lots have also progressed. Not all of today’s eateries can be regarded as establishments that have carried on the same business since the pleasure-quarter era. [45]

The interviews for this study were conducted in 2023–2025, and the field survey of operating snack bars took place in 2024. The composition of establishments and the interviews presented are records as of those survey dates. The current operation of individual establishments can be checked through each establishment’s own information. In the area that was once the pleasure quarter, housing and eateries increased afterward, and people still live there today. Its former businesses alone cannot explain life in Chushojima today. [45]

Postwar, former military land became schools and residential areas

Facilities of the Army’s 16th Division were located around Fukakusa, but after the war the military land was converted to universities and residential areas. The site of the Fushimi Magistrate’s Office is another place that, after hosting an army garrison and being requisitioned by the Allied forces, became the Toryo housing complex and other uses. Fushimi’s history includes not only cases where old buildings have remained on the same land, but also the renewal of the town through changes in land use. [48, 57]

Former waterworks and port sites became parks and schools

The growth in housing continued to push up water demand after the war. Construction of the new Fushimi Water Purification Plant began in 1939, but its completion was delayed by wartime shortages of materials and labor, and water supply did not begin until October 1945. Renovations continued afterward; when water began to flow from the Shin-Yamashina Water Purification Plant in 1969, the plant suspended purification work, and it was abolished in 1977. From construction delays to the renewal of facilities, the work of supplying water was also affected by war and population growth. [DXH017]

The site of the Fushimi plant’s reservoir became Fushimi Kitabori Park, and the sites of its filtration basins and distribution reservoirs were used for the grounds of Fujishiro Elementary School. Kitabori Park preserves the terrain of the castle moat and is, at the same time, the site of a modern facility that stored water. The same hollow has been used for different purposes: the castle’s outer defenses, a waterworks facility and a park. [DXH017, DXH013]

The port saw similar conversions. The large boat basin southwest of Chushojima Station, which coal barges entered until after the war, was filled in after river transport ended and became Fushimi Port Park. Today’s waterfront landscape includes parts that preserve the shape of the old port and parts that changed through land reclamation and park development. Old photographs and maps offer clues not only to what survives today but also to facilities that changed form after their use ended. [DXH009]

The freight port was put to new use for cleanup, pleasure boating and community development

The river did not naturally become a tourist waterfront once water transport had ended, either. It took upkeep and management: cleanup of the Horikawa went forward, and Jukkoku-bune operations began in May 1995. In 2001, a basic plan for revitalizing the central urban area of the Fushimi district was drawn up, and the following year, 2002, Fushimi Yume Kobo was launched, creating a framework for cooperation among the tourism association, the sake brewers’ association and the shopping streets. Preserving the sake breweries and the river was combined with the work of making them places that people can visit and use. [R2L008]

In 2021, Fushimi Port was registered as a “Minato Oasis,” and in 2022 a vision for community development that makes use of water and history was published. On October 13, 2024, a cruise event linking Hachikenyahama on the Osaka side with a boat landing in Fushimi was also held. This does not mean that the former regular freight routes have returned to everyday operation. Distinguishing such time-limited trial voyages from today’s Jukkoku-bune pleasure cruises shows that the old port’s systems are being reused in a form that is not identical to the original. [R2L008]

The modern history of Fushimi cannot be explained simply as a changeover from boats to trains. Boat propulsion, company management, types of cargo, the locations of banks and shops, schools, military facilities, postwar housing and the management of the waterfront each changed at different times. By tracing the places you can walk today together with the remains of facilities whose use has ended, you can see in concrete terms the work of the people who supported the port town.

If you are exploring the area now, the article giving an overview of the area lets you choose among the town center, the hills, Chushojima and the surrounding areas. The half-day walking plan looks at roads and buildings from different periods along a route from Gokonomiya Shrine through the three shopping streets and the sake brewery district to Chushojima.

References

• Kyoto City: The Leap to Modern Industry
• 90 Years of Fushimi Ward: A History of Diversity
• Kyoto City: The Prosperity of a Port and Commercial City
• Kyoto City: Kyoto’s Famous Waters
• Kyoto City: A Tour of Historic Sites and Famous Places for Fushimi Ward Residents
• MLIT Yodogawa River Office: The Misu Lock Through the Years
• MLIT: Misu Lock Facility Introduction
• Fushimi Tourism Association: Fushimi Yumehyakushu
• Kyoto City Museums Liaison Council: Gekkeikan Okura Kinenkan
• Takimoto Tetsuya (2020), An Economic-Historical Study of Kyoto’s Hanamachi in the Interwar Period
• Matsuda Yukiko (2012), Repositioning Geiko as Labor
• Kiyoyama Yohei and Kanki Kiyoko (2021), Characteristics Arising from the Development Process of Modern Sprawl Urban Space as Seen in Chushojima Minami-Shinchi
• Kiyoyama Yohei and Kanki Kiyoko (2026), The Spatiality of Snack Bars as Seen in Chushojima’s Cluster of Small Drinking Establishments
• The Ogura-ike Reclaimed Land That Supports Prosperous Living
• Kyoto Prefecture Red Data Book 2015: Ogura-ike
• Kyoto Prefecture Statistical Report, Showa 10 edition, Part 4 (published March 30, 1937)
• Saikin Jissoku Kyoto Shin Chizu (1912; Fukakusa Archives 015-001A)
• View of the Mukaijima Ferry Landing (c. 1870–1900; Rijksmuseum)

• The “Chin-Chin Densha” Streetcar Crossing Kanjin Bridge in Its Early Days (Fukakusa Archives 025-014)

• MLIT Yodogawa River Office: History of the Misu Lock

• MLIT Yodogawa River Office: Museum Facilities

• Kyoto Kanko Navi: Misu Lock and Fushimi Minato Hiroba

• DXH010 MLIT Yodogawa River Office: The Blessings the Yodo River Brought to Its Basin
• DXH022 Kyoto City: The Leap to Modern Industry
• DXH017 Fukakusa Archives: Life and Landscapes of Fukakusa
• DXH018 Kyoto City: Part 5, The Phantom Railways Across Fushimi Ward
• DXH013 Kyoto City: Fushimi, the Port Town Linking Kyoto and Osaka

• DXH009 Kyoto City: Part 4, Fushimi and Water Transport (From Kumano Pilgrimages to the Canal)

• R2L002: Kasamatsu Akio, Kanai Manzo and Nagao Yoshizo, “The Formation and Decline of Fushimi Port, Japan’s Largest River Port” (1988)

• R2L003: Uji City Historical Museum, Documents of the Ogura-ike Fishers’ Association (2002)
• R2L008: Suzuki Fumihiko, “Unraveling Town History through Roadside Land Prices 70: Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City,” Finance, December 2025
• R2L009: Kyoto City, Documents of Fushimi Ward: Commentary

• R2L016: Amano Kozo, Maeda Yasutaka and Nijikken Norio, “On Rivers and River Transport in the Higashi-Osaka Region (Part 1)” (1986)

• R3I009: Kyoto City Historical Museum, Urban History 22: The Takase River

• R3I011: Yodogawa River Office, The Misu Lock Through the Years
• R3I013: Amano Kozo, Maeda Yasutaka and Nijikken Norio, On Rivers and River Transport in the Higashi-Osaka Region (Part 1), 1986
• R3I014: Osaka Prefecture, Toward Creating Attractive Landscapes Along the Yodo River, March 2019
• R3I015: Yano Osamu, The Great Artery Linking Kyoto and Osaka: Toward the Revival and Further Revitalization of Yodo River Navigation, 2017
• R3I016: Kyoto City Waterworks and Sewerage Bureau, Materials for the 7th Meeting of the Management Vision Formulation Subcommittee, January 15, 2018
• R3I018: Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City, Historical Chronology, Showa 16–25