A Living Landscape Rather Than a Single Monument
In March 2014 the Japanese government added a 331.9-hectare swathe of central Gifu City to its register of Important Cultural Landscapes. The designation carries an unwieldy official name, the Cultural Landscape of Gifu in the Middle Reaches of the Nagara River, and what it protects is unusual. There is no single hall, gate, or pagoda at its center. It recognizes instead an entire working relationship between a river, a mountain, and the people who have lived between them for roughly five centuries.
The protected area is divided into five districts. The Nagara River district covers the water itself and its banks. The Mt. Kinka district takes in the forested peak, 329 meters high, that rises almost straight from the river's edge. Between them sit three districts shaped by human hands: Ukaiya, the riverside neighborhood of the cormorant fishing masters; Kawaramachi, a former river port of lattice-fronted merchant houses; and the old castle-town quarter, a grid of streets, earthen ramparts, and water channels laid out below the mountain during the age of warring states.
Stand on the Nagarabashi bridge at dusk and the reasoning behind the designation becomes plain. The mountain, the castle on its summit, the river curving beneath, and the tiled roofs of the old town all sit within a single field of view. People in Gifu call this their genfūkei, the original scenery of the place.
The Town a Warlord Reshaped
The form of modern Gifu was largely fixed in the sixteenth century. Mt. Kinka, then called Inabayama, carried a fortress that commanded both the Nagara River and the Mino plain spread out below it. Saitō Dōsan, the merchant who rose to rule the province and earned the nickname the Viper of Mino, held the mountain and set about ordering the town at its foot.
In 1567 Oda Nobunaga seized the castle and made it the base for his campaign to bring the country under one authority. He gave the area the name Gifu, drawing on characters tied to the founding of dynasties in ancient China, and rebuilt both the hilltop fortress and a grand residence at the mountain's western foot. The street grid, the perimeter earthworks of the outer defenses, and the network of channels carrying water through the town all date in their essentials to this period.
The river did the work that roads could not. Timber floated down from the upper valleys, along with Mino washi paper and other goods, and Kawaramachi grew up as the port where cargo changed hands. Tokugawa Ieyasu, who visited Gifu more than once to watch the cormorant boats, had ayu sweetfish caught here pressed into ayu-zushi and carried all the way to Edo. What is striking, walking the area today, is how little the underlying plan has shifted. The water still runs in its old courses, and the blocks still follow the lines drawn for a castle town.
Why the Landscape Earned National Protection
An Important Cultural Landscape is a category Japan uses for places where human livelihood and the natural setting have produced something worth keeping as a whole. Gifu qualified on several grounds at once.
The natural elements are exceptional in their own right. The Nagara River is counted among the clearest large rivers in the country, and Mt. Kinka, despite its modest height, supports a varied forest because it has been spared heavy logging for centuries. Layered onto this is a pattern of land use that survived from the warlords' city into the present, including the rampart earthworks, the channels, the streets, and the divisions of the town blocks. The tangible structures matter, but so do the intangible practices bound up with them: traditional crafts, neighborhood self-governance, and a calendar of festivals.
One further point weighed in the assessment. Residents themselves have pushed to keep the area intact, drawing up local townscape and landscape agreements that go beyond what national and prefectural law requires. The designation, in other words, recognized not only an inheritance but an ongoing choice to maintain it.
Walking the Cultural Landscape
The most rewarding way to read the landscape is on foot, and the old port quarter of Kawaramachi is the place to begin. Its core streets, Minatomachi, Tamaimachi, and Motohamamachi, run west from the foot of Nagarabashi bridge. The houses here follow the classic merchant pattern of a narrow frontage and a deep interior, their fronts closed by wooden lattice screens called kōshido. Several long-established shops still trade behind those screens, including makers of Gifu uchiwa fans and confectioners known for ayu-gashi, a sweet shaped like the river's signature fish. In recent years cafés and small restaurants have moved into renovated townhouses, so the street reads as neither a museum nor a film set but a working neighborhood.
Above the rooftops stands Mt. Kinka, and a cable car climbs from Gifu Park toward the reconstructed keep of Gifu Castle near the summit. The view from the top stitches the whole designation together: the river bending below, the plain reaching toward the horizon, and on a clear day the ranges beyond. Gifu Park itself occupies part of the site of Nobunaga's mountain-foot residence, where excavations have uncovered the remains of gardens set against the bare rock face.
The river is best seen at the level of its surface. The Ukaiya district, on the bank where the cormorant boats are kept, is the heart of the fishing tradition described below, and the embankment paths give an unhurried sense of how town and water meet.
Cormorant Fishing on the Nagara River
No element of the landscape is more closely identified with Gifu than ukai, fishing with cormorants, practiced on the Nagara for around 1,300 years. On summer nights a fishing master, the ushō, stands at the bow of a boat lit by a hanging iron basket of burning pinewood. He handles up to twelve cormorants at once on fine cords, a larger number than at any other cormorant fishery in Japan, and the birds dive for ayu in the firelit current while observers watch from low wooden pleasure boats.
The practice carries a weight of official recognition unusual for a fishing method. The Gifu fishing masters hold the formal title of cormorant fishing master of the Board of Ceremonies of the Imperial Household Agency, a status shared only with the masters of the nearby Oze fishery and held by no other cormorant fishers in the country. A set of 122 items of cormorant fishing equipment has been designated an Important Tangible Folk Cultural Property, and the fishing technique itself was named an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 2015. The role passes by inheritance within a small number of households, one master to each.
The fishing season runs from May 11 to October 15, pausing only around the harvest moon and on nights of high water. Visitors join from the cormorant viewing boats, which are bookable in advance and range from small craft to roofed boats seating dozens. The display known as sōgarami, in which the boats spread across the full width of the river and drive downstream together, closes the evening.
Around the Landscape
The compactness of central Gifu is one of its pleasures, and several worthwhile sites sit within a short walk of Kawaramachi. The Gifu City Museum of History, inside Gifu Park, sets the castle town in its wider context and offers an accessible introduction before a climb up the mountain. Close by, the Nagaragawa Ukai Museum is devoted entirely to the cormorant fishing tradition and is a good stop for anyone who wants background before an evening on the river.
A little further out stand two notable temples and a shrine. Shōhō-ji houses the Gifu Great Buddha, a lacquered figure built over a frame of bamboo and clay and counted among the largest dry-lacquer-style Buddhas in Japan. Sōfuku-ji, long connected to the Oda family, served as a place of memorial for the warlords of the region. Inaba Shrine, at the northern foot of Mt. Kinka, anchors much of the area's festival calendar.
For the cultural landscape itself there is no admission gate and no ticket. It is a lived-in part of the city, and the recommended approach is simply to walk it, ideally arriving in the late afternoon so that a stroll through Kawaramachi leads naturally into the lighting of the cormorant boats after dark.
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Q&A
- When is the best time to visit?
- The area rewards a visit in any season, but the cormorant fishing season from May 11 to October 15 is the most atmospheric window, since it allows a daytime walk through the old town followed by fishing on the river after dark. Early summer and autumn are comfortable for walking and climbing Mt. Kinka.
- Can visitors watch the cormorant fishing, and how is it arranged?
- Yes. Viewing boats depart from the boarding area near Nagarabashi bridge during the season. Reservations are made in advance through the Gifu City cormorant viewing boat office or through local hotels and inns, and boats range from small craft to large roofed vessels.
- How do I reach Kawaramachi and the riverside area?
- From JR Gifu Station or Meitetsu Gifu Station, take a Gifu Bus bound for the Gifu Park and Nagarabashi direction, or the city loop service, for roughly fifteen to sixteen minutes. Get off at the Nagarabashi or Nagarabashi-minami / Kawaramachi stop; the old streets are a short walk away.
- Is there an entrance fee for the cultural landscape?
- No. The Important Cultural Landscape is a lived-in part of Gifu City and is freely open to walk through. Individual attractions within it, such as the Gifu Castle keep, the cable car, and the cormorant viewing boats, charge their own fees.
- Can I visit Gifu Castle on Mt. Kinka?
- Yes. A cable car runs from Gifu Park to a station near the summit, from which the reconstructed keep is a short walk. Hiking trails of varying difficulty also lead up the mountain for those who prefer to climb on foot.
Basic Information
| Name | Cultural Landscape of Gifu in the Middle Reaches of the Nagara River (Nagaragawa Chūryūiki ni okeru Gifu no Bunkateki Keikan) |
|---|---|
| Location | Gifu City, Gifu Prefecture |
| Designation | Important Cultural Landscape (national) |
| Date of selection | March 18, 2014 |
| Area | 331.9 hectares |
| Districts | Five: Nagara River, Mt. Kinka, Ukaiya, Kawaramachi, and the former castle town |
| Principal constituent elements | The Nagara River, Mt. Kinka, historic roads and waterways, and traditional buildings |
| Cormorant fishing season | May 11 to October 15 (with occasional suspensions) |
| Admission | Free to enter the landscape; individual facilities charge separately |
References
- Gifu City — Important Cultural Landscape "Cultural Landscape of Gifu in the Middle Reaches of the Nagara River"
- https://www.city.gifu.lg.jp/kankoubunka/bunkazai/1026875/1005555.html
- Gifu Prefecture — Cultural Landscape of Gifu in the Middle Reaches of the Nagara River
- https://www.pref.gifu.lg.jp/page/15817.html
- Gifu Nagara River Cormorant Fishing — Cultural Heritage Related to Ukai
- https://www.ukai-gifucity.jp/bunkaisan.html
- Imperial Household Agency — Imperial Cormorant Fishing (Goryō Ukai)
- https://www.kunaicho.go.jp/culture/ukai/ukai.html
- Gifu Convention and Visitors Bureau — Gifu Nagara River Cormorant Fishing
- https://www.gifucvb.or.jp/sightseeing/ukai.php
Last verified: 2026.05.23