Photo/Illutration Tourists take a boat trip down the Ono river to view the townscape of Sawara, a living museum with Edo Period architecture still standing along the river. (Photo by Lisa Vogt)

I got it wrong. It wasn’t mosquito coils and a springtime fish--Katori (香取) and Sawara, the names of the awesomely picturesque area in Chiba Prefecture.

In 2006, Sawara merged with a number of nearby communities to form the new city of Katori.

From time immemorial, people have built communities in places where food was abundant. Jomon Pottery Culture Period (14500 BC – 1000 BC) structures and artifacts have been unearthed here near the Sea of Katori, and these early dwellers must have created shrines to pray for protection from natural disasters.

Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), one of Japan’s most significant military leaders and visionaries, ordered his civil engineers to divert Bando Taro (坂東太郎), today known as the Tone river, to pour into the ocean at Choshi instead of Tokyo Bay, where the unruly river caused much flooding and destruction to Edo.

The taxpayer-supported public works project took a whopping 60 years or more to complete, and when it did, Katori was linked to Edo by a waterway. In no time, Sawara flourished, gaining the reputation that it was better than Edo--"Oedo mitakerya Sawara e gozare" (If you want to see Edo, come to Sawara).

Today Sawara’s pleasant and walkable historic district, with its narrow and peaceful Ono river (or canal, if you prefer) flowing through it, is made up of charming old merchant houses, eateries, yakatabune houseboats, museums and more.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs designated the municipality as Kanto’s first Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings.

Inoh Tadataka (1745-1818), the surveyor and cartographer who first mapped the entire country using modern techniques, was adopted as the husband of a daughter in a wealthy sake-brewing and rice-trading family at 17 in Sawara. He ran the family business until around 50, then moved to Edo, where he learned Western astronomy, geography and mathematics. Then, strapping on his waraji sandals, off he went. Along the bank of the canal is his former residence, now a museum, where you can learn how he lived and the instruments and methodology he used.

Water drains from Jaja Bashi (樋橋), Sawara’s iconic wooden bridge, every 30 minutes, making a jaja sound. This sound is included in the Environment Ministry’s list of the Hundred Soundscapes of Japan.

Sawara is a mere half hour from Narita Airport, which makes the preserved historical district a perfect stopover destination. Methinks, however, that it’s well worth a day trip from the metropolis in itself.

Before leaving, I deeply bowed at Katori Jingu shrine in thanks for guiding me to its ohizamoto home territory, a delightful place.

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This article by Lisa Vogt, a Washington-born and Tokyo-based photographer, originally appeared in the Dec. 4 issue of Asahi Weekly. It is part of the series "Lisa’s Wanderings Around Japan," which depicts various parts of the country through the perspective of the author, a professor at Meiji University.

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