Tatsumi Irrigation Canal/Remains of the Tsuchishimizu

One Canal, Designated by the State in 2010

Tatsumi Irrigation Canal/Remains of the Tsuchishimizu (辰巳用水／附土清水塩硝蔵跡) lies in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, and was designated by the state on 22 February 2010. Its category is that of historic sites, places of scenic beauty and natural monuments.

The managing body is Kanazawa City, appointed on 13 January 2011.

The Agency records a canal completed in 1632, its chief purpose the supply of water to Kanazawa Castle. The date field reads early modern.

One Name Holding a Thing and Its Appendage

The designation takes a principal subject and an attached one under a single name.

The name reads: the Tatsumi canal, with the remains of the Tsuchishimizu gunpowder store. The word that joins them, tsuketari, marks what is attached.

The canal is the principal subject; the remains of the store are the appendage. A watercourse and the site of a store elsewhere are designated under one name.

The reading given in the record runs the whole title together as one.

At the Kubiki Railway locomotive shed, the present use stands in brackets after the name: two names for one building.

Here two separate subjects stand together in one designation, and that one word marks how they are joined.

Running Some Eleven Kilometres

What is designated extends as a line across the land.

The Agency records that it draws water from the upper reaches of the Sai River and runs about 11 kilometres to the castle.

The Yakushizawa waterway works run to 38 metres, with 4 structures set within about 350 metres: a single stretch of gully.

This runs 11 kilometres, carrying on from the upper river to the castle, across the town.

The mound at Futatsuzuka Kofun measures 60 metres overall and the Kubiki Railway shed about 40 metres east to west. Each is the length of one structure.

Here the course of the water is itself the subject, and this is its length.

Tunnels and Open Channels Still in Place

The engineering as first made survives.

The Agency closes that the tunnels and open channels of the time remain in good order, and that this is valuable for what it shows of early modern engineering.

A tunnel runs cut through the ground; an open channel runs uncovered at the surface. Both are present here.

Of the Yakushizawa works, the village records that local people keep them in good order and that they still serve their purpose. There the working continues.

Here what is recorded is that the fabric survives in good order. The assessment rests on what it shows of the engineering of its age.

The record adds that the canal also served irrigation along its course and the opening of new fields. Supplying the castle was its chief purpose, and the fields drew on it too.

Visiting

The canal lies in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, managed by the city.

It was completed in 1632, early in the Edo period.

Water is drawn from the upper reaches of the Sai River, and the destination is Kanazawa Castle.

The designation includes as an appendage the remains of the Tsuchishimizu gunpowder store. Such a store held the saltpetre from which gunpowder was made.

This is an open-air site, and whether and how it may be visited follows the managing body's arrangements. Check before travelling.