Nametoko Gorge was added to Your Favorites!
Ashizuri-Uwakai NP, Ehime
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Yukiwa Falls is longer than its famous view suggests: the cascade runs through 5 tiers over 300m. The broad, snow-ring-patterned granite face visitors usually see is about 20m wide and 80m long.
A 40m stretch of Yukiwa Falls doubles as a natural waterslide. Local residents were sliding down its smooth rock for fun before guided canyoning tours brought the activity to a wider audience.
Ayu, eel, river crabs and shrimp featured in local food traditions along the Meguro River, though it was not a major commercial fishery. In 1960, local residents also formed a trout-farming group at Nametoko.
At Deai-suberi, patches of other rock trapped inside the granite make curious patterns across a smooth rock bed about 20m wide and 150m long. It’s a geological surprise hiding in plain sight beside the river.
A route through the gorge linking Uwajima and Meguro was completed in 1840 to help move goods. The project used 8,300 workers, and local merchants paid the costs; a giant boulder beside Manno Bridge still records the road’s opening.
千畳敷 (Senjojiki) means “a thousand tatami mats,” a name inspired by its immense, flat rock bed. The Forest Office records that writers and poets once held poetry gatherings and banquets on this natural riverside floor.
“滑床” means something like “slippery bed”: water has worn the gorge’s granite into smooth rock floors. The name describes the very feature that makes places such as 千畳敷 and Yukiwa Falls distinctive.
Above about 1,000m, the forest shifts toward cool-temperate beech and rhododendron. These mountains mark the southern limit of beech distribution in Shikoku—a surprising change above this warm, green gorge.
The mountain south of the gorge, Sanbonkui (三本杭), takes its name from 3 boundary stakes once set near its summit. They marked the borders of the Uwajima, Yoshida and Tosa domains.
Nearby Meguro Furusatokan preserves a wooden relief model made for an Edo-period boundary dispute in 1665. Its 6 detachable pieces were designed to map the disputed slopes, and the model survives with unusually rich survey and court records.
Beside Torii Rock, a monument carries a forest motto written by Matsuno’s first mayor: play in the forest, learn from it, and draw closer to heaven and earth. He helped establish Manno-so as a visitor hub in 1957.
Nametoko’s annual mountain-opening ceremony prays for visitors’ safety and care of the natural environment. At one ceremony, local schoolchildren also released young amago trout into the stream.
