Little Kyoto of Western Japan — carp-filled canals and a samurai quarter under cedar mountains
Tsuwano is a bijou castle town in the mountains of western Shimane Prefecture, often called the 'Little Kyoto of Western Japan'. Its defining image is the main street canal, filled with enormous koi carp so thick they seem to pave the channel. Behind it lies a perfectly preserved samurai district, a late-Meiji-era Catholic church incongruously rising above the rice paddies (testament to hidden Christian martyrs), and a steep hillside shrine approached through 1,174 vermilion torii gates — a micro-Fushimi Inari. The town is connected to coastal Hagi by one of Japan's most scenic train rides th…
Tsuwano was the castle town of the Kamei clan from 1295 until the Meiji Restoration, when the feudal domain system was abolished in 1871. The town produced two of the Meiji era's most influential scholars: Nishi Amane (who coined the Japanese words for 'science', 'art', and 'philosophy') and Mori Ogai (Japan's foremost Meiji novelist). The Catholic church was built in 1931 on the site where 36 Japanese Christian converts were imprisoned and martyred by the Meiji government between 1868 and 1873 — among the last acts of Christian persecution in Japan.