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Left: "Shooting the rapids" in Japanese Government Railways, For Remembrance (n.d.). National Diet Library Digital Collection (参照 2023-05-27). Above and Header: Kyoto Municipal Government, Kyoto Calls You (1929), 64–65
Of all Kyoto’s attractions, probably the most praised by travellers was neither an imperial palace, a garden, a temple, nor a shrine. Rather, it was the boat ride down the Hozu river gorge from Kameoka (Kameyama until 1869), a town to the west of Kyoto, to Arashiyama, a still-popular activity today.
Uebayashi Hiroe (2015) has argued that “The Rapids,” as it soon became known in English, had its roots in Edo-period recreational travel. Certainly, it began to be marketed as an attraction to inbound tourists from an early point, sometime in the 1870s.
"Poling back from the rapids, Arashiyama" in Ethel Louis McLean, A Gentle Jehu in Japan (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1912), 102
The first review in an English-language guidebook is 1878, in the second revised edition of Stray Notes on Kioto, but this quotes from a traveller who made the journey two years earlier in 1876; meanwhile, an article in Kyoto’s Hinode newspaper from 11 April, 1920 claims that a Western tourist first participated in 1874 (Chiyoma 2022).
The earliest record that I have found by a traveller is F.D. Bridges' Journal of a Lady’s Travels Round the World (1883), which presents her 1878 boat ride as an already well-known — though no less thrilling — excursion (see below). From this point onwards, the rapids quickly became a mainstay of Kyoto itineraries and a valorized part of travelogues.
By the turn of the century, suggests S.C.F. Jackson in A Jaunt in Japan (1899), the excursion was so well-known that it could be introduced without explanation: "Naturally, we devoted a day to shooting the rapids" (78).
"Kioto, April 25 [1878].—We went with the Secretary [from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs] to the rapids this morning. A lovely ride in jinrikshas, going five miles an hour, past delightful villages and pretty hills to the river. Then, jinrikshas, coolies and all, embarked in a large flat-bottomed boat, made of very thin planks; and for two hours the three wary boatmen steered us down the rushing river. Sometimes through rocks just far enough apart to let our boat pass between them, and then out on to a foaming staircase of water, with black rocks standing up through it in an alarming manner, the strong current making the bottom of our slightly built-boat vibrate and shiver. The views were lovely, the hills sides ablaze with scarlet azaleas and bright-green foliage, chiefly maple, and wild cherry-trees, drooping into the dark rushing water. This is certainly a beautiful country and a perfect climate, we thought as we ate our sandwiches and bumped over the rocks."
F.D. Bridges, Journal of a Lady’s Travels Round the World (London: John Murray, 1883), 318–19
"The Hozu embarkation point (3 chō" [about 330 metres] northeast of San'in Kameoka Station)" in Hozugawa Yūsen Kabushiki Gaishi, The Hozu Rapids: A Short Guide for the Tourists (1930)
Originally, the starting point in Kameoka was accessible only by the Tamba kaidō road from Kyoto, and travellers often hired rickshaws drivers for the day.
A typical trip began in the morning at one of the Higashiyama hotels. From here, travellers would rush downhill, speeding — so they described — through the city to the western suburbs, where they would begin the passage over the hills to Kameoka, their drivers stopping on a couple of particularly steep ascents for travellers to get off and walk. Arriving at the landing place, the rickshaws were loaded on board the boats, a cramped arrangement but convenient due to the lack of drivers available for hire in Arashiyama. After shooting along the narrow, whitewater sections of the Hozu river back in the direction of Kyoto, travellers alighted close to some tea houses, where lunch was taken. Finally, they would take the rickshaws back to the city, perhaps stopping at a couple of temples on the way.
As travelogues described it, the Hozu river rapids was a rush of physical sensations from the morning rickshaw ride onwards, against which Kyoto’s more sedate heritage sites often struggled to compete.
In 1899, the Kyoto Railway (later San'in) line was extended to Kameoka, allowing travellers to walk about ten minutes from the station to the boat landing, then return by train from Saga to Kyoto station; into the 1910s, visitors could opt for a motorcar to Kameoka and a streetcar back from Arashiyama. Nevertheless, even without the rickshaw ride, travelogues and guidebooks alike continued to write up the rapids as one of Kyoto’s most unmissable sites.
British Royals on the Rapids
British Royals on the Rapids
Alongside the usual tourists, various generations of the British royal family also enjoyed the Hozu river rapids.
In November 1881, the Secretary at the British Legation in Tokyo, renowned Japanologist Ernest Satow escorted royal princes Albert Victor (1864–92) and George (1865–1936) on their trip down the rapids, during their visit to Japan as naval cadets on the HMS Bacchante (cf. Ruxton 2015, 394). In May 1890, Prince Arthur and his wife, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught and Strathearn (1850–1942), en route from India to Canada, shot the rapids while staying at the Yaami Hotel — Douglas Sladen, another guest at the hotel, was invited to accompany them and left a detailed account of the trip. The Duke and Duchess' son, Prince Arthur (1883–1938), did the same on his second state visit to Japan, to present Emperor Taishō with the honorary rank of Field Marshal in June–July 1918, an experience recorded on film by the British Ministry of Information (on reel five here, at the Imperial War Museums site).
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