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Nikko NP, Tochigi
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Kinugawa’s headwaters lie in Kinunuma, a peatland at about 2,030 m, described as Japan’s highest-elevation high moor. This 13.4-hectare wetland has tiny pools and more than 100 alpine plant species.
In Kamikawachi, Kinugawa ayu is salted and fermented with rice into nare-zushi, locally called kusare-zushi (“spoiled sushi”). Families share their batches, and the dish is offered at November’s Bonten Festival.
After a 1629–30 channel cut separated Kinugawa from the Kokai River, it became an Edo trade route. Aizu-Wakamatsu reportedly sent 120,000–130,000 freight loads, or “da,” along it each year.
A 1683 earthquake sent a landslide into the nearby Ojika River, damming it into a lake. Exactly 40 years later, stormwater broke through the natural dam, sending the 1723 Iyari flood down Kinugawa and devastating villages downstream.
At Ryuokyo Gorge on Kinugawa, the rocks formed in an undersea volcanic eruption about 22 million years ago. Over time, the river’s current and tumbling stones carved the gorge through them.
Kinugawa’s middle reaches are more than a passage for ayu: officials report salmon runs and many confirmed spawning beds there. The river links its mountain headwaters with important habitat much farther downstream.
Kinugawa has several proposed name histories: it was once called 毛野川 and also written 絹川 or 衣川. The “angry oni” explanation, inspired by floodwater and clattering rocks, is one theory—not a settled origin.
On Kinugawa’s middle reaches near Utsunomiya and Sakura, gravel bars support distinctive plants such as kawaranogiku and miyako-gusa, along with rare butterflies that depend on them. Tochigi protects a 54-hectare stretch.
Ryuokyo means “Dragon King Gorge,” but the name dates only to 1950. The winding Kinugawa was said to resemble an auspicious dragon climbing skyward.
When the 1683 earthquake landslide blocked the Aizu-West Road and formed a lake on the Ojika River, travelers could not take packhorses over the mountain. Locals improvised rafts to carry the stranded cargo.
