Japan's Canal Towns & Water Cities

About this book

Japan's best-loved old towns were built by water that people dug.

Japan's Canal Towns & Water Cities covers 200 waterway places in one traveller's format: the waterway itself, its history with the town on its banks, how to visit and what it tastes like, and the specific safety note that belongs to that place. Otaru's lamp-lit warehouse canal and Hakodate's star moat. Edo's surviving canals under Tokyo, and the sake canals of Sawara and Fushimi. Omihachiman's Hachimanbori, Kurashiki's white storehouses, Matsue's folding-roof moat boats. Yanagawa's whole moated city, Saga's creeks, Shimabara's carp running in spring water through the streets.

It is honest where water demands it. Town water is working water — unfenced banks, slippery stone, channels that rise — so safety is part of the format in all 200 entries: each closes with its own specific cautions and the same instruction to check the forecast, water levels, boat operations and access rules in official sources, and the practical chapters teach you how to read a water town before you ever stand on its banks. Places you may only look at say so.

Come and read the country its canals wrote.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.