Keage Incline

photo by そらみみ · CC BY-SA 3.0

A National Treasure since 2025: it is the first modern civil engineering work to become one.

You come out of the metro at Keage and the tracks are right there, climbing between two rows of cherry trees: you walk on them, on the sleepers, with no ticket and no opening hours. On this incline the boats arriving from Lake Biwa were loaded onto carriages and hauled up to get past the drop between the two stretches of canal. It is twenty minutes from one end to the other.

The Lake Biwa Canal carried water and goods to Kyoto, but boats could not get past the difference in height between one stretch and the next on their own: so in 1887 an inclined plane was built, that is, a sloping track along which carriages hauled the hulls up. On 27 August 2025 the Incline and the Nanzen-ji aqueduct, from 1886, were designated National Treasures together with the canal's three tunnels: five structures in all. It is the first time in Japan that this designation has gone to a modern civil engineering work.

ℹ️ Outdoors, free, with no opening hours and no ticket office: the tracks can be walked at any time. It is a few steps from the Keage metro exit, so it does not cost you a detour; it costs the twenty minutes it takes to walk it. ⚠️ The length and the difference in height are not stated by the municipality: if you are looking for the measurement, you will not find it.

🚉 Keage · 5 min walk

Sources: city.kyoto.lg.jp

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