Ever since the Hokuriku Shinkansen opened, I’ve been seeing this place pop up in a lot of YouTubers’ videos.
It’s a popular spot, and it just keeps getting busier.
The other day we went as a group for a banquet, and they served not only seafood but also dishes that felt almost like French cuisine.
That kind of surprise was seriously delicious—I was impressed.
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Tsuruga is a town of railways and a port.
It went through three air raids, but I was really glad I could see a diorama of what the town looked like before the war.
My dad and mom lived their lives in this town.
My father worked as an engineer in this rail yard.
That was more than 70 years ago now. -
This is a place where you can learn how precious life and peace are.
When you look at the world today, it feels like peace—the most important thing of all—is being left behind.
I hope this place will keep sharing a message of peace with the world. -
The railway plan back in Meiji 2 was for lines from Shinbashi to Yokohama, and from Kobe to Osaka, Kyoto, and Otsu. Another route was from Tsuruga to Nagahama.
It was a plan to connect the Sea of Japan side and the Pacific side.
The Nagahama-to-Otsu connection made use of water transport on Lake Biwa.
During the Meiji era, developing Hokkaido was a major priority.
Even before the Tsuruga–Nagahama line opened in Meiji 15, the Horonai Railway opened earlier in Meiji 13.
It ran from the Yubari coal mine to Otaru.
Railway construction kept moving forward in Japan, but steam locomotives needed coal.
As the rail network expanded, it also made it possible to gather troops for the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War.
You could say the railways also helped Japan’s economy grow significantly.
At the Tsuruga Railway Museum, you can really feel that kind of romance, too.
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Before WWII, there was a carved Momotaro figure in the transom of the main shrine building at Kehi Jingu Shrine.
I looked into why Momotaro would be there in the first place.
Kehi Jingu is regarded as the guardian shrine of the Hokuriku region. “Hokurikudo” was one of the four major ancient routes/regions, covering what are now Fukui, Ishikawa, Toyama, and Niigata. Sanyodo, meanwhile, covered Hyogo, Okayama, Hiroshima, and Yamaguchi.
Around the time of Emperor Sujin (not definitive, but roughly the 2nd century), expeditions were led by generals assigned to these regions. For Hokurikudo it was Ohiko-no-Mikoto, and for Sanyodo it was the Kibitsu clan.
Later, in the 3rd century, there were campaigns to Izumo in the San’in region and to the Kanto area, carried out by an alliance of Yamato Takeru and the Kibi clan.
Yamato Takeru is thought to have been strongly influenced by the Korean Peninsula. It’s believed there was trade with immigrants who brought iron weapons, horse culture, and so on by large ships across the “Northern Sea” (the Sea of Japan) to Wakasa (Tsuruga and Obama). The Kibi clan is also said to have had ironmaking technology.
Iron swords outperform bronze swords, and to bring a wide area under control, cavalry forces were essential.
There’s also a theory that the Kibitsu clan governed Sanyodo, while Hokurikudo was governed by the younger brother of the Kibitsu clan.
The Kibitsu clan in Okayama is considered the original home of the Momotaro legend, but Yamato Takeru is enshrined as one of the seven deities at Kehi Jingu.
You could say Yamato Takeru and the Kibi clan helped build the foundation of Yamato power.
And as for why Kehi Jingu is in Tsuruga—when you look back over 2,000 years of history, you can see just how important this area was.
