Hozugawa Kudari (descent of the Hozu River)

photo by kajikawa · CC BY 3.0

photo by 江戸村のとくぞう · CC BY-SA 4.0

Sixteen kilometres of rapids to Arashiyama, in about two hours, on boats without engines.

Wooden boats for around twenty people, handled only with oars and poles by boatmen standing up, run the rapids of the Hozu River from Kameoka to Arashiyama: sixteen kilometres of narrow canyon, cut into the rock, covered in about two hours. The steering technique (reading the current and pushing the boat with the pole set against the riverbed) has been the same for centuries, since the days when the river was used to carry timber and not tourists.

Commercial navigation on the Hozu River was organised in the early seventeenth century by the merchant Suminokura Ryōi, the same man who a few years later dug the Takase Canal in Kyoto: it was used to carry timber and goods from Kameoka to the capital. Boat tourism began in the early twentieth century, when freight transport was replaced by the railway.

ℹ️ Boarding is ten minutes’ walk from JR Kameoka Station. Departures during the day, 6,000 yen for adults, 4,500 yen for children from age 4 up to the end of elementary school. The duration varies with the water level, from about an hour to almost two.

🚉 Kameoka · 8 min walk

Sources: kameoka.info · setsulog.jp

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