Why Did the Place Name “Momoyama” Arise? The Abandonment of Fushimi Castle and the Planting of Peach Trees

The Appeal of Fushimi-Momoyama

“Momoyama” is a place name that arose from the peach trees planted on the castle site after Fushimi Castle was dismantled. It is not the case that a hill already called “Momoyama” existed before Toyotomi Hideyoshi built his castle and that Fushimi Castle was then built on it. The name has been handed down to today’s town and station names through an era when the castle was a center of politics, an era when its site became a famous spot for peach trees, and an era when an imperial mausoleum and residential areas were developed. [3]

In today’s Fushimi-Momoyama, you can walk to the shopping streets, Gokogu Shrine, the sake brewery district and the hills to the east, choosing among three railway lines: Keihan, Kintetsu and JR. If you trace on a map the place names that contain “Momoyama,” you can see that the castle’s location, the center of shopping and the railway gateways are each in different places. Let’s look at the origin of the name together with the locations of the town you can visit today.

After the castle was abandoned in 1623, the landscape of its site gave rise to “Momoyama”

Fushimi Castle began in 1592 as a residence that Hideyoshi built on the Shigetsu hill overlooking the Uji River. It was later expanded into a castle, but it collapsed in an earthquake in 1596 and was relocated to Kohatayama to the northeast. After Hideyoshi’s death, the castle burned in the fighting of 1600, and Ieyasu rebuilt it. Hideyoshi’s Fushimi Castle and Ieyasu’s Fushimi Castle were not a single castle that continued with the same location and the same buildings. [3]

In 1603, Ieyasu was appointed Seii Taishogun (shogun) at Fushimi Castle. However, after the Toyotomi clan was destroyed in the Sieges of Osaka and Nijo Castle came into use in Kyoto, the role of maintaining a large castle in Fushimi diminished. The castle was abandoned in 1623, and around that time its buildings and building materials were moved to castles, temples and shrines in various places. Peach trees were planted across the area of the former site, and a name meaning a hill with peach trees gradually took hold. The current place name conveys not only how the castle looked in its heyday, but also how the land was used after the castle was lost. [3]

The changes from the castle’s construction to its abandonment are covered in detail in The History of Fushimi: From the Azuchi-Momoyama Period to the Early Edo Period. What we want to note here is the order of events: it was not that “the area was called Momoyama because Fushimi Castle stood there,” but that the peach-tree landscape after the castle’s abandonment gave rise to the place name.

The year the castle was abolished and the years its buildings were moved are not necessarily the same

1623 was the year of the castle’s last major ceremony, the investiture of Iemitsu as shogun. Meanwhile, the Fushimi Yagura turret and the Sujigane Gomon gate in Fukuyama City, Hiroshima Prefecture, are buildings that Tokugawa Hidetada granted for the construction of Fukuyama Castle in 1622. The policy of ceasing to use the castle, the moving of its buildings, and the final ceremony and demolition were not events that all took place on a single day. If these are compressed into a single sequence of “relocated after the castle was abandoned in 1623,” buildings that were moved before then can no longer be explained. [DXH014]

During the dismantling and repair of the Fushimi Yagura in 1954, characters indicating the east turret of Fushimi Castle’s Matsunomaru enclosure were found on a beam, supporting the tradition of its relocation. A yagura is a building used for a castle’s defense, for storing goods and for similar purposes. This three-story turret retains a boro (watchtower) style structure, with a small third story placed on top of first and second stories of the same floor area. Even though no buildings remain on the hill in Fushimi, there is history that can be verified from the structure and materials of buildings at their relocation sites. [DXH014, DXH027]

However, not every tradition handed down in various places of a building “moved from Fushimi Castle” has been substantiated in the same way. Even in cultural property descriptions, the front gate of Gokogu Shrine is a building that “is said to have been” moved from the Otemon main gate of Fushimi Castle. What has been verified differs between the Fushimi Yagura, which has inscriptions supporting its relocation, and buildings whose history is passed down on the basis of temple or shrine traditions. [DXH015]

Peaches were both a blossom-viewing scene and a product that supported livelihoods

The connection between the castle site and peaches also appears in the Edo-period guide to famous places, Miyako Meisho Zue. The “Shiroyama” entry in the 1786 edition contains a description of the castle site and a verse on peach blossoms, showing that the hill where the castle had disappeared was introduced as a place for enjoying blossoms. The page shown is a historical source through which the area’s name and landscape can be confirmed from writing of the time. [66]

Peach trees were not grown only so that people could look at their blossoms. According to the description of the local group “Momoyama Project” introduced by Kyoto City, Momoyama once produced fruit for eating, seeds for medicinal use and cut flowers for ornamental use. From a single tree, people obtained both something to eat and flowers to decorate with. The place name Momoyama contains not only the memory of a famous blossom-viewing spot, but also the work of growing and using peaches. [78]

However, who planted the first trees, the precise extent of the planting and the number of trees in each period cannot be determined from explanations of the place name’s origin or from this page alone. If you read Miyako Meisho Zue as a source showing how famous places were perceived in the late Edo period, and maps as sources showing roads and town names, you can concretely trace what each of them reveals.

A 1674 diary and a 1711 guide record what blossom viewing was actually like

An early record of a visit to view the peach blossoms is the diary of Prince-Abbot Gyojo (Gyojo Hosshinno), who was the monzeki (imperial abbot) of Myohoin temple. It records that on the 13th day of the third month of the old lunar calendar in 1674, he heard that the peaches in Fushimi were in full bloom and went to see them, taking people with him. About half a century after the castle’s last ceremony, there were people in the capital who heard reports of the blossoms and set out for Fushimi. [R2E008]

Kaibara Ekiken, a Confucian scholar who was also a scholar of herbal studies (honzogaku), praised Fushimi’s peach blossoms in his Kyoto guide Keijo Shoran, published in 1711, comparing them with the cherry blossoms of Yoshino, and said that it was best to view them from a distance from around Takeda. This shows that, in addition to viewing the blossoms by going beneath the trees, people also enjoyed looking from the west at the blossoms covering the foot of the hills. The same book describes the site of the castle keep on the hilltop and the many peach trees at the foot of the hill one after the other, treating the castle ruins and the peach groves as a single landscape. [R2E008]

Momoyama was also depicted in Fushimi Kagami, a guide from the An’ei era, around 1772–1780. An introduction to the copy held by the Gekkeikan archives explains that the blossoms spread over an area east of the town of Fushimi, a little more than ten cho from north to south and from three or four cho to five or six cho from east to west. However, the phrase “several hundred million trees” is an exaggeration expressing the magnificence of the sight, not a surveyed count of planted trees. It is a guide to famous places, with a different purpose from records of field plots or tree-by-tree cultivation. [R2E016]

The peaches of a hometown in kanshi poetry

In the 18th century, Ryu Soro, a poet of kanshi (Chinese-style poetry) from Fushimi, traveled by boat toward Fushimi and wrote a poem about the peaches blooming west of the old castle. In this work, he overlaid Peach Blossom Spring, the ideal world described by the Chinese poet Tao Yuanming, onto the waterside and peach groves of his hometown. For Soro, who worked as a Confucian scholar for the Hikone domain, Fushimi was also the hometown he had left as a child, leaving his mother behind. The famous blossom spot also became a subject through which people living far away thought of returning home. [R2E008]

The comparison to Peach Blossom Spring is a literary expression, but the poem features concrete places: boats arriving from Osaka, the port, houses and the blossoms west of the old castle. What was cherished as a famous blossom-viewing spot was not a flower garden isolated on the castle site, but the peach groves at the foot of the hills, next to the daily life of the port town. [R2E008]

From farmers clearing the castle site to a production area shipping flowers

Regarding the people who planted the peaches, there is a local tradition that a family of the Nishino clan, samurai from Mikawa, cleared Fushimiyama after the castle was abandoned, and that their descendants cleared the land for generations and planted peaches and other fruit trees. This tradition is also introduced in the local area overview of Momoyama Higashi Elementary School. [R3H012, R2E017]

Another tradition, that the castle’s gardeners cleared the castle site and began planting peaches and camellias, also appears in the spring 2019 issue of Kyoto City’s Norin-gyo Dayori (Agriculture and Forestry Newsletter). Whereas the story of the Nishino family speaks of a place of origin and family succession, this one speaks of land clearing by people whose work was growing garden trees. These explanations contain no record linking the gardeners to the Nishino family, nor the full name of any single person who planted first. The two stories have been handed down not as one merged account, but as stories conveying who transformed the castle’s land into an area producing fruit trees and flowers. [R3H012, R2E015]

Gazetteers compiled in the modern period also preserve accounts of how the castle site was turned into land for peaches. The 1912 Fushimi Momoyama states that “there was a person” who planted peaches on the ruined hill, without giving that person’s name. The 1929 Gotairei Kinen Kyoto-fu Fushimi-cho Shi (Gazetteer of Fushimi Town, Kyoto Prefecture, Commemorating the Enthronement Ceremony) explains that the stony wasteland left after the castle’s abandonment was suitable for growing peaches, and states that by the Enpo era in the late 17th century, peaches were already blooming all together. Separate from stories that narrow the first planter down to one person, these are sources describing how land that had lost its castle buildings changed into a famous blossom spot over several decades. [R3H025, R3H020]

Momoyama remained a flower-producing area from the Meiji period through the Showa period. A flower growers’ association was established in Fushimi, and farmers who grew cut flowers carried on the trade. In the farm work that Kyoto City introduced in 2019, spring peaches and rapeseed blossoms were adjusted to bloom around the time they reached buyers and then shipped. Peaches whose blossoms are viewed on the hill and peaches whose branches are cut, timed to bloom and delivered into people’s daily lives differ in how they are grown and how the work is organized. [R2E015]

Fruit for eating, seeds for medicinal use and cut flowers for ornamental use differ in the part harvested and in the season, even from the same peach tree. Behind the name Momoyama lay the work of production: clearing the castle site, tending the trees and sending out goods for each use. [R2E015, R2E016]

Around the hill of peaches, field crops were also grown

The Momoyama hills and Fukakusa to the north were not land for growing peaches alone. In the Fukakusa hills, bamboo, tea and fruit trees were grown according to the nature of the soil, and Kubo persimmons were also grown in the tea fields. In the modern period, slumping tea exports and competition from fruit grown in other areas led to a shift toward vegetables. Even though the name “Momoyama” remains, it is not the case that the same crops have continued to be grown on the same scale. [DXH017]

Momoyama daikon radish is another product that bears the area’s name. It has short roots with firm flesh and is mainly used for takuan pickles. However, regarding its origins, one theory holds that daikon of the Ibuki mountain lineage was transplanted to Okamedani, while another holds that it is a Chudoji-lineage daikon native to Kyoto, and Kyoto City also does not regard its origin as clear. Today, its conservation cultivation is entrusted to farmers in Mukaijima. The history of a vegetable bearing a place name, the places where it was once grown and the place where the variety is preserved today do not necessarily coincide. [DXH016]

Distinguishing Shigetsu, Kohatayama, the imperial mausoleum and the replica castle keep on the map

Before the castle was built, Shigetsu to the south was the site of the aristocrats’ Fushimi Villa and the residence of the Fushimi-no-miya princely house. Kohatayama is the hill to which the castle moved after the earthquake. If both are grouped together under the broad later name “Momoyama,” the locations of the first castle and of the castle Ieyasu rebuilt become confused. By going on to the article on the ancient, Heian and medieval periods for the history of Shigetsu, and to the article on the castle and castle town for the changes of the castle on Kohatayama, you can continue reading while keeping the differences between the sites clear. [52, 53]

Today, the Fushimi Momoyama Imperial Mausoleum of Emperor Meiji is located around the site of the main enclosure (honmaru) on Kohatayama. The use of the same hill changed in the order of castle, peach planting and imperial mausoleum. Parts of the castle’s inner moat remain as Kosetsu Pond and Jibu Pond, but the above-ground landscape as a whole has not been preserved as it was in the castle’s era. [3, 79]

The keep of Fushimi Momoyama Castle that can be seen nearby was built as a facility of an amusement park that opened in 1964. The keep remained even after the amusement park closed in 2003. It is not that the buildings of Hideyoshi’s or Ieyasu’s castle survive as they were; rather, in the Showa period, a castle-shaped facility was added to land where the Momoyama name had already taken hold. Rather than treating the imperial mausoleum and the replica keep as the same destination, it is a good idea to check the location of each before visiting. [3]

The name of the imperial mausoleum also uses the place name that arose after the castle’s abandonment

Emperor Meiji was buried at the Fushimi Momoyama Imperial Mausoleum in 1912. Its current address as given by the Imperial Household Agency is Momoyama-cho Kojoyama, and the mausoleum takes the joen kaho form, round on top and square below. “Momoyama,” which arose from the peach landscape, and “Kojoyama” (Old Castle Hill), which indicates that a castle once stood there, both remain within a single address. The mausoleum did not exist in the castle’s era, nor was the area first called Momoyama because the mausoleum was built. [DXH025, DXH026]

Names of daimyo, names of trades and the name of the peach remain in today’s town

Among Fushimi’s town names, names of different origins sit close together. Otesuji is named after the road facing the castle’s Otemon main gate, and town names such as Mori Nagato and Hashiba Nagayoshi preserve the memory of daimyo residences. Setomono-cho, Shioya-cho and Naya-machi, on the other hand, have names that suggest the trades of townspeople. “Momoyama” is a name that arose from the landscape that came after this development of the castle town. [3]

In the town planning that proceeded from 1594, plots for samurai residences, temples and shrines, townhouses and roads were laid out. Kyomachi-dori and Ryogaemachi-dori, running north to south, became the axes of the townspeople’s residential areas, and the low-lying wetlands on the west side were reclaimed, partly using soil dug out for the moats. This layout, with the castle and daimyo residences on the hill to the east and a merchant town spreading out to the west, underlies today’s roads and town names. [1]

The Fushimi no Zu shown above depicts town names, roads and waterways. The production date of the original map is unknown, but comparing it with present-day maps lets you consider where roads extended and where the waterside met the town. Reading the place names one by one provides clues that connect the castle era, the era of the famous peach-blossom spot, and today’s residential areas and shopping streets.

The Momoyama name also remains in three stations, which serve as gateways to the area

Fushimi-Momoyama Station on the Keihan Main Line, Momoyama-Goryomae Station on the Kintetsu Kyoto Line and Momoyama Station on the JR Nara Line: having three railway gateways within an area where you can walk between them is a major advantage of Fushimi-Momoyama. Kyoto City also presents this area as one with easy access to Kyoto, Osaka and Nara, where shopping streets are close to residential areas. Because you can choose among three lines, there are options not only for commuting and shopping, but also for stopping by during Kyoto sightseeing or extending your itinerary toward Uji and Nara. [80, 20]

From west to east, Keihan’s Fushimi-Momoyama Station, Kintetsu’s Momoyama-Goryomae Station and Gokogu Shrine stand in a row, and JR Momoyama Station is southeast of the Kintetsu station. The arcade of the Otesuji Shopping Street begins on the west side of the Keihan station. Knowing where the three stations are tells you which way to walk after you arrive at a station, and makes it less likely that you will get lost by assuming the shopping street and the eastern hills lie in the same direction. [34]

From Kyoto Station, you can take Kintetsu to Momoyama-Goryomae or the JR Nara Line to Momoyama. From Gion-Shijo, Sanjo or stations on the Keihan line in Osaka, Keihan’s Fushimi-Momoyama is the gateway. You can make use of each line for onward travel: JR toward Uji and Nara, Kintetsu toward Kyoto and Nara, and Keihan toward the eastern part of Kyoto City and toward Osaka. Because the stations served and whether you need to transfer vary by train type, specifying both the railway company and the station name when searching for routes is the reliable approach. [14, 15, 30]

This “triple access” does not mean that you can transfer among three lines at a single station. Each of the three stations has its own ticket gates, and you walk along town streets between them. If you say “Kintetsu’s Momoyama-Goryomae” when arranging to meet, or “JR’s Momoyama” when looking up a destination, you can avoid mixing up the similar station names.

Walk the hills east of the stations, and visit the shopping street and sake brewery district to the west

If you start walking the town from Gokogu Shrine and Otesuji, Kintetsu or Keihan is a convenient gateway. By heading west along the shopping street and then south from Naya-machi or Ryoma-dori, you can plan a route that takes you on foot to the sake brewery district and the waterside. On days when you visit the castle site and the imperial mausoleum to the east, you will cover a wider area on foot than on days spent only in the shopping streets in front of the stations. You can choose an itinerary, including the time needed to reach the hills, using the access guide by line and the maps. [34]

After walking further south from the sake brewery district, you also have the option of returning by Keihan from Chushojima Station. Since you do not need to go back to the station where you arrived, you can see the town in the order of Gokogu Shrine, Otesuji, the sake brewery district and Chushojima. Being able to use different stations for arriving and leaving is another part of what makes Fushimi, with its many rail options, easy to explore on foot. The half-day walking plan describes in detail an order for walking this area.

Peach-planting activities connect the origin of the name to the present

The “Momoyama Project,” which carries out tree planting and care together with local residents and schools, has sought to nurture in the modern town the peach landscape that became a place name. Kyoto City’s introduction describes activities that go beyond planting peach trees to building community ties through watering, weeding and pruning. In fiscal 2016, the project received an Excellence Award in the Landscape Creation Activities category of the Kyoto Landscape Award. [78]

It is not the case that only the place name was left behind after the castle buildings were lost and the former peach orchards changed. There are people who research the land’s history from its name, plant peach trees and look after them. Learning about the “Momoyama” in station names and addresses is not only a way to picture the castle of the past, but also a starting point for learning about the livelihoods that followed the castle’s abandonment and what today’s town is trying to carry on.

References

• Kyoto City: Urban History 20, Fushimi Castle
• The Heian Period: Aristocratic Culture and Fushimi
• The Medieval Period: An Age of Turmoil / Fushimi and Its Ties to the Northern Court
• Kyoto City: The Castle Town Founded by Hideyoshi
• Miyako Meisho Zue (1786 edition)
• Kyoto City: Momoyama Project
• Imperial Household Agency: Fushimi Momoyama Imperial Mausoleum of Emperor Meiji
• Kyoto City: Sumu Machi Fushimi, Tambabashi, Fushimi-Momoyama and Momoyama-Goryomae Station Area
• Kyoto City: Sumu Nara Kyoto (Living in Kyoto), Fushimi-Momoyama Area
• Keihan: Fushimi-Momoyama and Chushojima Walking Map
• Keihan: Fushimi-Momoyama Station
• Kintetsu: Momoyama-Goryomae Station Floor Map
• JR West: Momoyama Station
• DXH014 Fukuyama City: Fukuyama Castle
• DXH027 Fukuyama Castle Museum: Fushimi Yagura
• DXH015 Cultural Heritage Database: Main Hall of Gokogu Shrine
• DXH017 Fukakusa Archives: Life and Landscapes of Fukakusa
• DXH016 Kyoto City: Momoyama Daikon
• DXH025 Imperial Household Agency: Fushimi Momoyama Imperial Mausoleum of Emperor Meiji
• DXH026 Kyoto City Library: Reference Inquiry on the Graves of Emperor Meiji and General Nogi
• R2E008: Fukui Tomoko (1997), “Poems on the Peach Blossoms of Fushimi: Focusing on the Soroshu”
• R2E015: Kyoto City, Norin-gyo Dayori No. 101 (Spring 2019), “Do You Know Kyoto’s Flower-Producing Areas?”
• R2E016: Gekkeikan, Fushimi Momoyama: A Town of History, Water and Sake

• R2E017: Kyoto Municipal Momoyama Higashi Elementary School, Overview of the School’s Community

• R3H012: Kyoto Municipal Momoyama Higashi Elementary School, Overview of the School’s Community (June 27, 2012)

• R3H025: Dai Nihon Shiseki Kenkyukai, ed. (1912), Fushimi Momoyama

• R3H020: Kyoto-fu Fushimi-cho, ed. (1929), Gotairei Kinen Kyoto-fu Fushimi-cho Shi

Featured illustration: Cafe & Sweets Parade Kyoto.