Shimonoseki City Waterworks Bureau Utsui Reservoirs

Shimonoseki's first reservoirs, in the Utsui valley

The Shimonoseki City Waterworks Bureau Utsui Reservoirs are a pair of water-supply reservoirs in Utsuikami, Shimonoseki City, Yamaguchi Prefecture: Utsui No. 1 Reservoir, finished in 1906, and Utsui No. 2 Reservoir, finished in 1929. Four structures around them, two intake towers, an office and an overflow tunnel entrance, were entered on the register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on January 16, 1998.

The place name is read Utsui (内日). It is farming country in the hills north of the city centre, and water collected here still travels about 12 kilometres south by pipeline to the Takao and Hiyoriyama purification plants.

From Burton's survey to the first tap

Shimonoseki is a port town without a large river, and securing clean water for drinking and firefighting was a long-running problem. In 1891 the city asked William K. Burton, the Scottish engineer then teaching sanitary engineering at the Imperial University, to survey the area. His team, working from December that year, identified Ichinose in the village of Utsui as the best source.

Nothing happened for several years. A waterworks committee formed in 1896 asked Takigawa Kenji, chief waterworks engineer of Osaka, to turn Burton's report into a working design, but money was the obstacle and national approval came only in February 1901.

Construction began that March with the Utsui reservoir itself. Water reached part of the city on January 1, 1906, and the planned works were complete by March. The city describes it as the ninth modern waterworks in Japan, following Okayama. No. 1 Reservoir holds about 1,000,000 cubic metres.

By the 1920s population growth and demand from railways and shipping had outrun supply. Under the third expansion project a second reservoir was built upstream of the first, begun in November 1925 and completed in February 1929 together with a new purification plant at Hiyoriyama. No. 2 Reservoir holds about 900,000 cubic metres.

What was registered, and where it stands

The four registered structures at the Shimonoseki City Waterworks Bureau Utsui Reservoirs belong to a batch of nine registered together, the rest being at the Takao plant and the former Hiyoriyama plant office. The city notes these were the first Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in Shimonoseki, and the first case in Japan of a complete chain of waterworks, from intake to distribution, being registered at once. The Agency for Cultural Affairs lists all four under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

At No. 1 Reservoir the 1906 brick intake tower rises at the southern end of the water, and the wooden office of the same year stands across the road to the south. Upstream at No. 2 Reservoir, the 1929 reinforced-concrete intake tower sits near the southern shore, with the stone-arched overflow tunnel entrance a little further south.

The pleasure here is comparison. A Meiji brick tower and an early Shōwa concrete one stand a short walk apart, and the Agency's own description calls their designs a study in contrast.

Visiting the Utsui reservoirs

The Shimonoseki City Waterworks Bureau Utsui Reservoirs are a working water source. The city's page on the registered properties offers tours by advance application only for the Waterworks Archive Room and the Takao plant, and the four Utsui structures are not on that list. The towers, the tunnel and the office cannot be entered, so a visit means looking at them from around the reservoirs. Please respect any restricted areas, which exist to protect the water supply.

Utsuikami lies in the hills north of central Shimonoseki. Buses are infrequent, so check Sanden Kōtsū timetables for both directions before setting out. No. 2 Reservoir lies upstream of No. 1; the two are within walking distance of each other, but the route climbs.

Enquiries go to the General Affairs Section of the Shimonoseki City Water and Sewerage Bureau (083-231-3121), which the city lists as the contact for reservoir levels and for visits to the Waterworks Archive Room (checked September 2026).