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Chichibu-Tama-Kai NP, Tokyo
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Before highways, Okutama timber traveled toward Edo on the Tama: logs were floated downstream and raft crews steered the cargo. The gorge’s rapids once powered a supply route to the capital.
Kanzanji, perched above the Tama, enshrines a wooden Buddha entrusted to Japanese calligrapher Taguchi Beiho at China’s Hanshan Temple. Built in 1930, the temple also has 36 individually painted ceiling panels.
At riverside Mamagotoya, tofu and yuba are made by hand every day with Sawanoi’s sake-brewing water and selected Japanese soybeans—a tasty way the gorge’s famous water reaches the table.
Near the gorge, Ozawa Brewery makes sake with both medium-hard water from a horizontal tunnel dug about 140 meters into rock and soft water from a well across the Tama River.
Sawanoi sake takes its name from Sawai, the old village where the brewery stands. The brewery explains that “Sawai” describes a place where abundant water flows in streams; records show sake-making here by 1702.
In 1985, the Environment Agency selected Mitake Keiryū for Japan’s original “100 Selected Waters.” The listed treasure is the Tama River’s clear stream at the gorge—not a spring.
Painter Kawai Gyokudo evacuated to Mitake in 1944, returned after his Tokyo home burned in 1945, and stayed until his death in 1957. The nearby museum preserves work from his teenage sketches to his later years.
In 1969, just 17 paddlers raced Japan’s first All-Japan canoe slalom championship here. They tackled an 800-meter course with 18 gates, preparing for the sport’s Olympic debut at Munich in 1972.
Kaede Bridge, the riverside suspension bridge near Sawanoi Brewery, takes its name from Zhang Ji’s Tang-dynasty poem “A Night Mooring by Maple Bridge”—the same poem that mentions China’s Hanshan Temple.
Brown dippers are among the birds seen along Mitake Gorge. These stream specialists dive into the current and walk along the riverbed to pick aquatic insects from between the stones.
Sawanoi’s logo is a sawagani, or Japanese freshwater crab. This native species lives in clean streams and is used as an indicator of good water quality—an apt little emblem for a brewery beside the gorge.
Since 2010, the Mitake Cup has turned the Tama into a racecourse for rafting, SUP, riverboarding and packrafting. Organizers also support the area with river cleanups and water-rescue training.
