Sightseeing in Tochigi: Storehouse Town on the River

What Is Tochigi Like?

Tochigi is a city spreading across the south of Tochigi Prefecture, the third largest in the prefecture after Utsunomiya and Oyama. In the Edo period it was linked to Edo by boat traffic on the Uzuma River and prospered as a post town on the highway used by the Reiheishi, the imperial envoys bound for Nikko. Having escaped wartime destruction, its center still holds many storehouses and merchant houses from the Edo to Meiji periods, and it is called “Little Edo” and the “Town of Kura (Storehouses).”

This article introduces the sights from north to south, in descending order of latitude. The route begins at a shrine on a mountain and heads south through a streetscape on the old highway, the river flowing through the storehouse town, the neighborhood of a famous writer’s birthplace, a mountain sanctuary and finally a vast wetland in the south. As for the origin of the city’s name, one theory holds that it came from a horse chestnut (tochi) tree at the center of the area when it was first settled, and another that it relates to the chigi, the forked roof finials, of the Shinmeigu shrine’s hall.

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1. Kaemon-machi

Kaemon-machi is an old streetscape along the Nikko Reiheishi Kaido on the north side of central Tochigi. The name comes from Okada Kaemon, who reclaimed wasteland in the Tensho era (1573–1592). It later became land held by the hatamoto Hatakeyama clan, and around the Genroku era (1688–1704) a magistrate’s office was set up within the Okada family compound, with the Okada family serving as headmen who oversaw more than a dozen villages in the domain.

In July 2012 the town became the first in Tochigi Prefecture to be selected as a National Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings. It covers about 9.6 hectares and is characterized by long, narrow plots with shops facing the street and living quarters and storehouses behind. No buildings of three stories or more are seen, and the traditional scenery remains well preserved, centered on the shopping street.

When the Kitakanmon road opened in 1932, traffic declined and shops gradually decreased. After the war a proposal to rename the town “Kotobuki-cho” because the old name was seen as feudal was raised, but a spirit of respect for history is said to have preserved the present name. This is our own speculation: perhaps the way this town stayed old and quiet was the result of both the history of declining highway traffic and the choice of residents who kept the name. Many people live in this district, so walk quietly when visiting and do not enter private property.

2. Tochigi City Museum of Literature and the Kencho-bori Moat

The Tochigi City Museum of Literature opened in April 2022 in a wooden Western-style building completed in 1921 (Taisho 10). It was originally the Tochigi town office and later served as the Tochigi City Hall building. Inside, favorite belongings and manuscripts of Yamamoto Yuzo, Yoshiya Nobuko and Shibata Toyo, all connected with Tochigi, are presented.

The Kencho-bori moat running around the outside of the building is a water moat dug around the Tochigi Prefectural Office when it was placed here in the early Meiji era. It is connected by a canal so that boats could pass directly to and from the Uzuma River, and as the “Kencho-bori with Canal” it is a prefectural historic site. The moat remained after the prefectural office moved to Utsunomiya, and carp and swans still swim in it today.

Tochigi was, for a time in the early Meiji era, the seat of the prefectural government. It is said that the move of the prefectural office to Utsunomiya helped the town avoid rapid modern urbanization, one reason historic buildings remain. In this site’s view, the rebirth of a former government office as a place for reading also shows the town’s attitude of holding on to old things and continuing to use them.

3. The Kura Town and Korai Bridge

In central Tochigi, called the Town of Kura, remain traces of a merchant city nurtured by the boat trade on the Uzuma River and the prosperity of the post town on the Nikko Reiheishi Kaido. Tochigi was the 13th post station on the Reiheishi Kaido, and after a series of great fires in the town in the closing years of the Edo period, fire-resistant earthen-walled storehouse buildings increased rapidly. Having also escaped wartime destruction, it still has rows of storehouses and merchant houses, and a 48-hectare area was selected as one of Japan’s Top 100 Urban Landscapes in fiscal 1995 as the “Tochigi City Historic Townscape Landscape Formation District.”

Korai Bridge crosses the Uzuma River flowing through that storehouse town. In the Edo period only two bridges spanned the river in Tochigi, and Korai Bridge was one of them. It was originally called Nenbutsu-bashi, and the name Korai-bashi was given toward the end of the Edo period. It was replaced with a concrete bridge in Taisho 14 (1925) and stands so today. Beside the bridge runs the black fence of the Tsukada family, who were timber shipping wholesalers. The poet Shibata Toyo is said to have worked in service near this bridge when she was young, and on hard days to have come to the bridge and comfort her colleagues, and she left those memories in her poems.

The Uzuma River was a river that flooded repeatedly before embankments were built. People suffered each time the bridge was washed away, and a sad legend about the bridge is still told. In the story, after memorial rites the bridge came to be called “Korai-bashi,” and it is introduced in local museums and elsewhere. Whether it is a true story is unknown, but it conveys the prayers of a town that lived with water.

4. Yamamoto Yuzo Hometown Memorial Museum

Yamamoto Yuzo was a novelist and playwright known for works such as “Robo no Ishi” (A Roadside Stone), “Shinjitsu Ichiro” and “Onna no Issho,” born in 1887 into a family of kimono merchants in Tochigi town. The Yamamoto Yuzo Hometown Memorial Museum opened in 1997 beside his birthplace and displays his belongings and other items.

The buildings are two two-story shop storehouses (mise-gura) built in the early Meiji era, joined north to south under a continuous ridge. The south building was built first, and the first floor of the north building preserves the form of its earthen-floored area and the accounting desk. Both are nationally Registered Tangible Cultural Properties and blend naturally into the streetscape of the storehouse town.

It is said that after finishing higher elementary school Yuzo was sent to work for a kimono merchant in Tokyo but ran back home, and that he carried feelings of frustration in his youth, such as being denied further schooling despite wanting it and instead helping with the family business. He later published one work after another, idealistic works that asked readers the meaning of life in plain words, and after the war he also devoted himself to reform of the Japanese written language. This is our own speculation: the sensibility he developed in daily life in a merchant town probably runs beneath his works.

5. Taiheizan Shrine and Ajisai-zaka (Hydrangea Slope)

Mt. Taihei rises in the west of Tochigi, and Taiheizan Shrine stands near its summit. According to the shrine’s own tradition, it was founded in 827 by the priest Jikaku Daishi Ennin. The stone steps of the main approach number about 1,000, and because hydrangeas are planted along both sides it is called “Ajisai-zaka” (Hydrangea Slope); about 2,500 plants bloom from late June to mid-July.

The enshrined deities are Ninigi-no-Mikoto, Amaterasu Omikami and Toyouke-hime-no-Okami, and the Zuijin-mon gate, the dragon painting on the ceiling, the main hall, the worship hall and the Hoshinomiya Shrine buildings are designated Tangible Cultural Properties of Tochigi City. The scene of tree frogs calling along the approach was selected as one of Japan’s 100 Soundscapes under the title “Tree Frogs of the Hydrangea Slope at Mt. Taihei.”

The Mt. Taihei area is a prefectural nature park, and along the scenic drive a “tunnel of cherry blossoms” of about 4,000 trees forms, selected among Japan’s 100 Best Cherry Blossom Spots. The lookout Kenshin-daira is called the “Matsushima of the land” and is said to be where Uesugi Kenshin trained soldiers and horses in the Eiroku era (1558–1570). It is a view also chosen among the 100 Views of Mt. Fuji in Kanto, and on clear winter mornings you are said to be able to see all the way to Mt. Fuji. It is a working shrine, so please worship quietly and be considerate of this place of faith.

6. Mt. Iwafune and Kosho-ji Temple

Mt. Iwafune is a 172.7-meter mountain in the former town of Iwafune, at the southernmost end of the Ashio Mountains. Its strange shape with sheer cliffs is the result of quarrying that continued from the Edo period, gradually changing the form of the mountain. Kosho-ji on the mountain is a Tendai temple said to have been opened in 775 (Hoki 8) by the priest Gusei-bo Myogen. Counted among Japan’s three great Jizo sites, it was a sanctuary that drew the faith of people all over the Kanto region.

In the Edo period it enjoyed the patronage of successive shoguns, and in the Kyoho era (1716–1736) its halls were greatly renovated. The three-story pagoda, mountain gate and bell tower built in 1751 are prefectural designated cultural properties. Mt. Iwafune is also said to be a place where the souls of the dead gather, and it is said that until around the 1960s people came from all over Kanto at the spring and autumn equinox weeks, and food stalls filled the approach.

Iwafune stone cut from the mountain was carried to places around Kanto for retaining walls and foundation stones, partly by boat on the Watarase River. At its peak around 1955 about 40 stone shops stood in a row, but with the spread of concrete the trade declined in the 1960s, and no quarrying takes place now. Near Iwafune Station, materials on Iwafune stone are displayed in a building from 1931. In the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the western peak collapsed. It is a working temple, so please worship quietly and stay away from cliffs and places where falling rock is a risk.

7. Watarase Retarding Basin and Lake Yanaka

The Watarase Retarding Basin is Japan’s largest retarding basin, spanning four prefectures: Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama and Ibaraki. Its area is about 3,300 hectares, more than twice the size of Haneda Airport. Most of it belongs to Tochigi City, and in 2012 it was registered as a Ramsar Convention wetland. The lowlands where the Omoi and Uzuma Rivers join the Watarase River are surrounded by embankments to store water during floods and prevent flooding downstream.

A village called Yanaka once stood here. As damage from the mine pollution of the Ashio Copper Mine spread, the government went ahead with a plan to buy up the entire village and build a retarding basin, and Yanaka Village was abolished in 1906. The history of Tanaka Shozo and others who tried to protect the land lies here. North of Lake Yanaka are remains such as the site of the village office and of a shrine, and a joint memorial monument stands outside the embankment. This is also a place to put your hands together quietly in prayer.

Lake Yanaka is an artificial lake completed in 1989, shaped like a heart. When it was being created in 1972, it is said that descendants staged a sit-in protest in front of bulldozers carrying away gravestones, trying to protect the center of the former Yanaka Village, and the planned oval lake was redesigned into a heart shape that avoids that spot. The basin sometimes floods after rain and is dangerous, so please do not enter during high water or bad weather.

Local Specialties, Food and Drink

The former town of Nishikata in Tochigi City is known as a strawberry-producing area, and the city’s mascot is also based on a strawberry. In the former town of Ohira in the west there is a grape community where farmers growing Kyoho, Shine Muscat and other grapes gather, welcoming grape-picking visitors from inside and outside the prefecture every year. For Tochigi Prefecture as a whole, kanpyo (dried gourd strips) production ranks first in Japan, making it a signature local product. Made by peeling the fruit of the yugao gourd into ribbons and drying it, it has no strong flavor and is used in soups, egg dishes and seasoned rice.

Tochigi’s character as a river-port town extends to its food too. Nishikigoi (colored carp) swim in the Uzuma River, and since the release of 30,000 fry in 1963, efforts have continued to nurture carp as a tourism resource. At their peak, together with the Kencho-bori moat, they are said to have numbered 100,000. Rather than naming a dish, the sight of carp swimming in the river and the moat might be called the town’s specialty.

Rare Wildlife and Nature

Almost the entire Watarase Retarding Basin apart from its reservoir is reed marsh, and 67 species of plants listed in the Ministry of the Environment’s Red Data Book have been found there. A reed burning (yoshi-yaki) is held every March, and continuing the controlled burning by hand is one reason many endangered species remain. 33 species of fish have been confirmed, there are many wild birds, and the city and Oyama City have set up artificial nesting towers for storks.

Another rarity of the basin is that the borders of three prefectures, Tochigi, Gunma and Saitama, meet within the flat land. The prefectural border, which had been within the river, stayed unchanged after the river was rerouted, and a three-prefecture border in a plain is said to be rare even nationwide.

On Mt. Taihei, hydrangeas and cherry blossoms, azaleas in late May and autumn leaves in late November color the seasons, and wild birds such as bush warblers and cuckoos can be seen. In the Uzuma River and the Kencho-bori moat, nishikigoi and swans swim.

Other Notable Things About This Town

The beginning of Tochigi’s river transport is said to be in the early Edo period, when Tokugawa Ieyasu’s remains were reburied from Kunozan to Nikko and goods for the Nikko service were unloaded at Tochigi. Tochigi later prospered through trade with Edo, and also became a post town on the highway along which the Reiheishi, dispatched from the imperial court, passed for the great Nikko festival on April 17 each year.

The storehouse town has by no means been protected under fair winds. In the Showa era storehouses were demolished, and there was a time when arcades and signboards hid them. When a survey in the 1980s found that nearly 400 storehouse-style buildings remained, town-building began in earnest. In 2009 it also received a Beautiful Townscape Grand Prize. The “Little Edo Summit,” held with Kawagoe and Sawara, began in 1996.

Iwafune Station, at the foot of Mt. Iwafune, appears in the first episode of Shinkai Makoto’s animated film “5 Centimeters per Second,” and the area in front of the station became a poster for the film. Many people visit the film’s setting, but the station and its surroundings are part of local people’s daily lives, so please visit quietly.

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The Night Side: Ghost Stories and Haunted Spots of This Town

So far we have walked Tochigi’s daytime face: a hydrangea approach, a highway townscape, the storehouse town, river and moat, the neighborhood of a writer’s birthplace, a mountain sanctuary and finally the retarding basin. In every place, time overlaps the time when people lived, prayed and at times carried great pain.

This town has handed-down stories connected with water and mountains. Mt. Iwafune is said to be a mountain where the souls of the dead gather, and the Uzuma River has a sad legend of people trying to calm its floods. Both are probably the prayers of people living alongside nature’s severity, taking shape.

In this site’s view, a ghost story is like a shadow that a place’s history and way of life cast on the human heart. At KARASU CHANNEL, we present true ghost stories and haunted spots not so that you can visit them but so that they are recorded. Having learned the daytime scenery, please read the night-time tales as well.

Before You Go

Business hours, fees, closing days and access change easily, so they are not listed in this article. Before heading out, please check the latest information on the official website of each facility or local government. Some places may have restricted entry because of weather or disasters.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. In what order should I tour Tochigi to be efficient?

A. This article introduces places from north to south. The central area with the storehouse town, Kaemon-machi, the museum of literature and the memorial museum can be covered on foot, but Mt. Taihei, Mt. Iwafune and the Watarase Retarding Basin are far apart, so consider a car, bus or other transportation. Routes and schedules change, so check official information.

Q. When are the hydrangeas at Ajisai-zaka at their best?

A. According to the prefecture’s guide, the hydrangeas along the approach to Taiheizan Shrine are at their best from late June to mid-July. The flowering period varies from year to year, so please check the latest bloom information before you go.

Q. Is there anything to keep in mind when walking the storehouse town or Kaemon-machi?

A. Both are districts lined with homes where people live and shops that are open for business. Walk quietly, do not enter private property or grounds without permission, and take care when photographing not to bother those around you.

Sightseeing in Tochigi: A Storehouse Town Shaped by River Trade, Then Mountains and Wetlands

Places to visit in this town (north to south)