Highlights of Fushimi-Momoyama: Getting to Know the Hills, the Three Shopping Streets, the Sake Brewery District and Chushojima

The Appeal of Fushimi-Momoyama

Being able to choose among three railway lines—Keihan, Kintetsu and JR—and walk from the stations to the shopping streets, the shrines and temples, and the sake brewery district is a major advantage of visiting Fushimi-Momoyama. You can enter the area on the line that suits your starting point, such as Kyoto Station, Gion-Shijo or Sanjo, or the Osaka or Nara areas, and you can also plan an itinerary that returns from a different station after your walk. [80]

If you divide the town into the eastern hills, the old town extending from the stations, and the port and Chushojima to the south, it becomes easier to understand how each place came to be. The hills have castle ruins and imperial mausoleums; the old town has Gokonomiya Shrine and the shopping streets; Minamihama-cho has sake-brewing buildings; and Chushojima, across the waterway, carries the history of a former pleasure quarter and of the town after the railway opened.

The shopping streets, the old town with its shrines and temples, and the hills with the castle ruins and imperial mausoleums differ both in the direction you walk and in what you can see. Knowing how they relate to each other lets you choose which areas to fit into half a day and which places to visit by allowing more time.

An overview of the eastern hills, the western old town, and the port and Chushojima to the south

Using the locations in the table as a guide, you can decide where to visit first and which direction to walk. Fukakusa to the north and the former Ogura Pond to the south are also part of Fushimi’s history, but they are places for which you should allow separate travel time, apart from a half-day route around the town center. [3, 34, 44, 48, 57]

Gokonomiya lies to the east of Keihan Fushimi-Momoyama Station and Kintetsu Momoyama-Goryomae Station, and Otesuji lies to the west. Heading west along Otesuji and turning south brings you to the Nayamachi Shopping Street, and crossing Aburakake-dori takes you onto Ryoma-dori. From Horai Bridge at its southern end, you can choose to go east to the sake brewery district, west to Kyobashi, or south across the river to Chushojima. [34, 41, 43]

The eastern hills: a place to explore the history of the castle ruins and imperial mausoleums

Heading east from Otesuji or the sake brewery district brings you to the Momoyama Hills. Shigetsu, near the Uji River, has a history that predates Toyotomi Hideyoshi, including the Fushimi Villa (Fushimi Sanso) and the Fushimi-no-miya, a princely house of the imperial family, and it is also where Hideyoshi first built a castle. After that castle collapsed in an earthquake in 1596, the castle was moved to Mt. Kohata to the northeast. [3, 52, 53]

The area around the present-day Mausoleum of Emperor Meiji corresponds to the site of the main bailey (honmaru) of the castle on Mt. Kohata, and the replica castle keep visible nearby was built in 1964 as an amusement park facility. The castle remains, the mausoleum and the replica keep cannot be viewed as buildings from the same period. The article on Fushimi Castle explains the stone walls and roof tiles confirmed through excavation, and the article on the origin of the place name Momoyama explains the planting of peach trees after the castle was abandoned. [3]

Walking the hills differs, in both direction and terrain, from the route heading south from the shopping streets by the stations to the sake brewery district. You can divide your time according to your purpose—for example, setting aside time for the hills on a day focused on history, and walking the old town on a day centered on shopping and dining.

North of Otesuji, too, there are temples and shrines tied to local life

Looking toward the Tambabashi side, you will find Kinsekigu Shrine and Daikokuji Temple in Takajo-cho. Kinsekigu is known for its kurogane holly, a natural monument designated by the City of Kyoto, and events such as a mikoshi (portable shrine) procession are also held there. Daikokuji became a prayer temple of the Satsuma Domain in the Edo period, and it also holds the graves of people who died in the Teradaya Incident. Kinsekigu’s town festival and Daikokuji’s ties to the Satsuma Domain are part of the history that remains in the northern old town. [48]

This northern old town lies in a different direction from the route that walks south through the three shopping streets. On a day when you want to take your time visiting shrines and temples, you can combine the Tambabashi side with the area around Gokonomiya, keeping it separate from a day when you go as far as Minamihama-cho.

On Otesuji, choose sake and pickles in the arcade that continues from the station

Otesuji was the road leading to the Ote Gate, the main gate of Fushimi Castle. Today’s shopping street lies west of the Keihan station, with shops lined up beneath an arcade running east to west. Its facilities have been updated over the years as a shopping street, including suzuran (lily-of-the-valley) street lamps in 1923 and a solar-powered arcade in 1997. [5]

There is Aburacho, where you can sample and compare different sakes before buying, and Kyogokuya, which sells sake and its own homemade Kyoto pickles, so you can also use the street to choose souvenirs before heading back to the station. If you continue south to Nayamachi, you can visit more food shops and restaurants. [21, 22, 41]

Nayamachi is lined with shops selling river fish, prepared dishes and bread

The Nayamachi Shopping Street is a street where shops such as prepared-food shops and river-fish specialists support everyday meals. The shopping street’s store directory lists shops including Funashin Sano Shoten, which sells live river fish and its own processed products, and Sasaki Pan Honten, which sells anpan (sweet bean buns) and jam buns. In addition to sake souvenirs, you can also find shops selling everyday food. [24, 42]

The high arcade overhead was designed with the passages of Paris, the city’s covered commercial arcades, in mind. The wall decorations and granite paving are also part of the shopping street’s design. Along with the food shop fronts, you can see a street design that differs from that of Otesuji. [40]

On Ryoma-dori, enjoy meals and cafés along the stone-paved street

Continuing south from Nayamachi, the section running from Aburakake-dori to Horai Bridge is the Ryoma-dori Shopping Street. It has been fitted out with machiya-style buildings, gas-lamp-style streetlights and stone paving, and at its southern end you come out onto the waterside. [43]

In addition to shops selling fruit and vegetables or pickles, places such as an Italian restaurant, a pâtisserie and a coffee stand are featured. You can also combine buying food in Nayamachi with stopping for a meal or coffee on Ryoma-dori. The shops on each street and the confectionery shops in the surrounding area are summarized in the Fushimi-Momoyama shopping guide. [24]

Gokonomiya is a famous water site and also a festival venue where the neighborhoods gather

Gokonomiya’s Gokosui water is associated with a tradition that in 862 fragrant water sprang forth and the shrine was granted its name. The present water was restored in 1982, and the shrine explains that it is drawn up from 150 meters underground. The shrine’s tradition and the current method of drawing the water are covered in detail in The Water of Fushimi. [16]

The autumn Shinkosai festival is a festival in which mikoshi (portable shrines) travel around the area. During the festival, each neighborhood puts out a hanagasa (decorated flower umbrella) and heads to the shrine by way of Otesuji. The mikoshi also travel around the parish (ujiko) area, so the town’s streets, not just the shrine precincts, become the festival venue. Otesuji, a shopping street, also serves as a place where local residents gather to carry out the festival events. [49]

Gokonomiya is not the only place with local festivals. In Misu to the west, a torch festival, in which people carry large torches made from riverbank reeds around the area, has been handed down. A City of Kyoto cultural heritage survey describes the relationship between the festival and the history of the craftspeople and settlements connected with the river. If you plan to visit to see a festival, please check the dates and locations of each one separately. [46]

Looking at Gokonomiya’s buildings also shows how Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s castle town was carried over into the Tokugawa era. The main sanctuary (honden) was built in 1605 by order of Tokugawa Ieyasu in the gokensha nagare-zukuri style, with five bays between the pillars across the front and the front part of the roof extending long, and it features painted carvings. The worship hall (haiden) was donated in 1625 by Tokugawa Yorinobu, Ieyasu’s tenth son, and is said to be the carriage porch (okurumayose) of Fushimi Castle, which he had received as a grant. By distinguishing between the main sanctuary, whose construction date is known, and the tradition that the worship hall was moved from the castle, you can grasp the relationship between the shrine and the castle concretely. [DXP01]

The precincts also contain Toshogu, which enshrines Ieyasu, and Hokoku-sha, which enshrines Hideyoshi. The main sanctuary of Toshogu was built in 1622, but Hokoku-sha was founded in 1873. The presence of shrines to both men in the same precincts is not because the Toyotomi and the Tokugawa were enshrined together from the beginning. Efforts from different periods—construction in the early Edo period and the honoring of Hideyoshi in the Meiji era—shaped the present precincts. [DXP01]

Gokonomiya’s festival has a history linking the port and the townspeople’s quarters

Gokonomiya’s festival has not been prepared by the shrine alone. According to a petition submitted to the Fushimi magistrate in 1696 by Miki Yoshikatsu, the chief priest of Gokonomiya, parishioners donated metal hoko (halberd-like ritual poles) to replace the nine bamboo hoko that had existed previously. Four were added to the five there had been up to the previous year, completing a set of nine, and the petition requested permission for them to take part in the procession ahead of the mikoshi. The dates of the kenboko (sword-tipped hoko) donated in 1694–1696 can also be confirmed from their inscriptions. [R2P007]

The donors include not only residents of Fushimi but also people from Kitahama in Osaka and from Edo. In 1699, Chushojima was also brought into the parish. An area that developed by catering to visitors to the port and the townspeople’s quarters of Kyomachi and Ryogaemachi took part in the festival of the same tutelary shrine and prepared its implements and processions. A City of Kyoto survey conducted in fiscal 2010–2013 records that nine kenboko have been handed down at the shrine but are not brought out for the festival. You can look separately at the origins and present roles of the hanagasa, the mikoshi and the kenboko. [R2P007]

In 1696, when the metal hoko donated from 1694 onward were completed as a set of nine, the participation of Sarutahiko, the deity who guides the way, in the procession was also arranged. Gokonomiya Jinja, a book written in 1915 by Miki Zenzo, the chief priest of Gokonomiya, contains the text of the petition mentioned above and the inscriptions recording the donors and restorers of each hoko. The first was donated in 1694 by Takemoto Gobei Masaharu of Fushimi; in 1695 four members of the Isoda family of Edo followed, and in 1696 donors including Tsunokuniya Seiemon of Kitahama in Osaka and the townspeople of Kyomachi 3-chome in Fushimi. The festival’s implements preserve both the unity of the town and offerings from people living outside Fushimi. [R3H011, R3H001]

The large lions (ojishi), which travel around the parish neighborhoods ahead of the mikoshi, are implements that came into being at a different time from the kenboko. Gokonomiya has a tradition that a male and female pair of large lions was offered in Bunsei 4, or 1821. On October 1, 2026, the shrine announced that it had completed their first repair in about 50 years. The metal hoko, Sarutahiko and the large lions did not all come together at once; rather, the procession took shape at different times during the Edo period. [R3H007, R3H001]

At the Okura Sake Museum in the sake brewery district, learn the brewing process through its tools

The Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum in Minamihama-cho is a museum housed in a renovated sake brewery built in 1909. It displays sake-brewing tools such as wooden vats, sake barrels and kai (stirring paddles), and introduces the history of brewing in Fushimi. [38]

Knowing the roles of the preserved tools makes the work of turning rice into sake more concrete. A koshiki is a tool for steaming rice; rope is wrapped around its body, which resembles a large steamer, for reinforcement and to retain heat. Small hand buckets called “kitsune” (fox) and “tanuki” (raccoon dog) were used to transfer the fermented moromi (mash) into sake bags for pressing. [37]

The cultural property “Fushimi Sake-Brewing Tools,” owned by Gekkeikan, also includes tools for making vats and barrels and tools used for shipping. The surviving materials show not only the work of brewing sake but also the work of preparing containers and sending out the finished products. [39]

The guri-masu, used to draw water, is a tool that served as both a container and a measuring vessel. Because its handle rotates to keep the masu level, it could measure the volume while drawing water. Sake brewing requires attention not only to the composition of the water but also to accurate quantities for each batch. In addition, when washing wooden vats, brewers repeatedly carried out yugomori—pouring in boiling water and covering the vat with a lid—then scrubbed them with a sasara (bamboo brush) and dried them in the sun. Old vats and small containers were also tools for the measurement and hygiene control that kept fermentation stable. [DXP04]

If you want to read up on brewing methods beforehand, Tsuki no Katsura’s Nigori Sake and Gekkeikan’s Brewing Technology explains koji, which turns rice into sugar; yeast, which produces alcohol; and the differences in effervescence and temperature control.

At Fushimi Yumehyakushu, the structure of the former head office is also worth seeing

The Fushimi Yumehyakushu building was completed in 1919 and was used as Gekkeikan’s head office until 1993. The present café space was once where the sales and accounting departments worked. Features such as ranma (transom panels), chigaidana (staggered shelves) and a tsuboniwa (small courtyard garden) remain, so you can see not only the breweries where sake was made but also a building where sake was sold and the business was run. [7]

There is also a reason for the stone steps and stone enclosure at the entrance. The building was built about 1 meter higher than the road in preparation for flooding of the Uji River. In a place where water transport was convenient, preparing for floods was also necessary. [7]

The waterside around Kyobashi was a port linking Kyoto and Osaka

The Gokawa River and the Uji River branch channel near the sake brewery district carry the history of Fushimi’s prosperity as a port town. In 1594, a port was opened to transport materials for building the castle, and in the Edo period it became a relay point connecting to the Takase River on the Kyoto side and the Yodo River on the Osaka side. The Kyobashi area was also a point of departure and arrival for the daimyo of western Japan, and honjin and waki-honjin (official inns for daimyo and their retinues) and inns used by boat passengers were located there. [1, 2]

Sake was not the only thing carried by boat. As travelers gathered, businesses supporting lodging and meals developed, and as goods gathered, businesses handling transport and storage developed. This transport and commerce is the reason Fushimi prospered even after the castle was gone. The History of Fushimi-Momoyama guides you to articles to read for each period. Boat transport, the magistrate’s rule and residents’ petitions are explained in The Edo-Period Port Town, and canals and railways in From the Modern Era Onward.

The Misu Lock (Misu Komon) shown in the photograph is a facility in Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City, built so that boats could travel between the Gokawa River and the Uji River, which have different water levels. Because it uses the same mechanism as the Panama Canal—raising and lowering the water level between two gates—it is also called the “Panama Canal of Fushimi.” It was completed in 1929 and is no longer operated to pass boats through to the Uji River. [32][36][93]

Continuing farther south from the central sake brewery district brings you to the lock and its museum. At the museum, you can learn how boats were passed through the lock using a working model, and check how the surrounding area is laid out using a model of Fushimi Port and the town. According to the official information, it is about a 10-minute walk from Chushojima Station. Visitor information appears in the article on water and flood control, and construction photographs in the article on modern history. If you plan to ride a Jikkokubune boat, deciding on the operating day and departure time first makes it easier to plan the rest of your itinerary. [91][92]

In Chushojima, learn the difference between the former pleasure quarter and Minami-Shinchi by the station

In Higashi-Yanagi-cho and Nishi-Yanagi-cho, across Horai Bridge to the south, the Chushojima pleasure quarter was established in the Edo period. It was a development that anticipated customers traveling to and from Fushimi Port, and the town took shape through the building of a bridge in 1699 and the relocation of the pleasure quarter in 1700. Chokenji Temple in Higashi-Yanagi-cho was also involved in this development and is known as a temple enshrining Benzaiten. [44, 46, 48]

Minami-Shinchi, on the other hand, near Keihan Chushojima Station, is an area that became urbanized in the early Showa era, after the station opened in 1910. Houses and eating and drinking establishments lined the area between the former pleasure quarter and the station. The Edo-period Higashi- and Nishi-Yanagi-cho and Minami-Shinchi, which welcomed people arriving by rail, came into being in different eras. [44, 48]

Even after business as an akasen (licensed red-light district) ended in 1958, changes continued, with premises turning into ochaya (teahouses), ryokan inns, apartment buildings, eating and drinking establishments and more. Present-day Chushojima is not a town that can be explained by its former pleasure quarter alone. Chushojima from the Modern Era Onward covers the system that controlled the people who worked there, as well as the postwar changes of business and the area’s transition into a residential district. [45, 47]

With half a day, go from the three shopping streets to the sake brewery district and the waterside

If you visit Gokonomiya first and then head west along Otesuji and south through Nayamachi and Ryoma-dori, you will reach Horai Bridge. From there, if you go to the sake brewery district in Minamihama-cho and choose either a visit to the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum or a stop at the café in Fushimi Yumehyakushu, you can see both the shopping streets and the sake industry within a single day. A walking plan of about 4 hours introduces a route that also includes time for meals and shopping. [34, 41, 43]

The castle ruins and imperial mausoleums are in the eastern hills, and Fushimi Inari Taisha is in Fukakusa to the north, so they require separate travel from the town center. You can check the locations of the stations and areas and choose which places to visit.

References

• City of Kyoto: Urban History 20, Fushimi Castle
• Keihan: Fushimi-Momoyama and Chushojima Strolling Map
• Kiyoyama Yohei and Kanki Kiyoko (2021). Characteristics of the Modern Sprawl Urban Space in Chushojima Minami-Shinchi Arising from Its Development Process
• City of Kyoto: Fushimi Ward Residents’ Tour of Historic Sites and Famous Places
• Fushimi Ward at 90: A History of Diversity
• Nayamachi Shopping Street Promotion Association: Access
• Kyoto Kanko Navi: Ryoma-dori Shopping Street Promotion Association
• Gokonomiya Shrine: History
• Gokonomiya Shrine: Shinkosai Festival
• City of Kyoto: Comprehensive Survey Report on Kyoto’s Cultural Heritage, Chapter 4
• Kyoto Kanko Navi: Fushimi Otesuji Shopping Street
• Ginjo Shubo Aburacho: Official Website
• Totteoki no Kyoto: Fushimi Sake and Kyogokuya
• Keihan: Fushimi Spot Guide
• Nayamachi Shopping Street Promotion Association: Store Directory
• Nayamachi Shopping Street Promotion Association: About the Nayamachi Shopping Street
• Kyoto City Museum Liaison Council: Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum
• National Museum of Nature and Science HITNET: Industrial Technology History Materials at the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum
• City of Kyoto: Designated and Registered Cultural Property “Fushimi Sake-Brewing Tools”
• Fushimi Tourism Association: Fushimi Yumehyakushu
• City of Kyoto: The Castle Town Founded by Hideyoshi
• City of Kyoto: The Prosperity of a Port and Commercial City
• MLIT Yodogawa River Office: History of the Misu Lock
• Kiyoyama Yohei and Kanki Kiyoko (2026). The Spatiality of Snack Bars in the Clusters of Small Drinking Establishments in Chushojima
• Takimoto Tetsuya (2020). An Economic-Historical Study of Kyoto’s Hanamachi in the Interwar Period
• The Heian Period: Aristocratic Culture and Fushimi

• The Medieval Period: An Era of Upheaval / Fushimi and Its Ties to the Northern Court

• MLIT Yodogawa River Office: Museum Facilities

• MLIT Yodogawa River Office: Misu Lock Museum Visitor Information

• Kyoto Kanko Navi: Misu Lock and Fushimi Minato Plaza

• MLIT: Misu Lock Facility Overview

• DXP01: Gokonomiya Shrine: Precinct Details
• DXP04: Kyoto City Cultural Tourism Resources Protection Foundation: Fushimi Sake-Brewing Tools

• R2P007: City of Kyoto Cultural Heritage Survey: Gokonomiya Festival

• R3H001: City of Kyoto: Survey Report on Kyoto’s Kenboko, Gokonomiya Festival

• R3H011: Miki Zenzo (1915). Gokonomiya Jinja
• R3H007: Gokonomiya Shrine: Notice of Completion of the Large Lion Repairs (October 1, 2026)

Featured image: Cafe & Sweets Parade Kyoto.