Futago, Kawasaki — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Futago?

Two burial mounds gave the district its name. They stood near Motoi-mura, in what is now the fifth and sixth chome, and were called the Futagozuka. Local volunteers surveyed them in the Taisho era.

A single photograph of the finds survives, but the mounds themselves and everything dug from them were lost between the earthquake, the war and the housing that followed. A stone marks the place. It stands in the Futagozuka park in the fifth chome, and the name also survives on a bridge over the Nikaryo Yosui.

What is the history of Futago?

The Fuchu Kaido came first. It ran through the south of the district in the Ritsuryo era, linking Kuraki and Tachibana to the provincial capital of Musashi and to the Tosando beyond, and the centre of Futago village lay along it. A flood moved the village.

Komyo-ji, worn down by the Tama river, shifted to the new Yagurasawa Okan in 1641 along with the people around it, and that is said to be the beginning of Futago as it now stands. The road changed its name in the mid-Edo period. The Yagurasawa Okan became the Oyama Kaido, both as the Ashigara road between Edo and the Kamigata and as the pilgrim way for the Oyama faith, and the centre of the village moved across to it.

A ferry crossed the river. Bridges over the Tama were restricted for the defence of Edo, so the Oyama Kaido used the Futago ferry until the Futago bridge was built in 1924, and the streets around the landing prospered as a post town. A pleasure quarter followed the bridge.

The boat inn Kameya opened a second house behind Futago shrine for the bridge workers, geisha houses and restaurants gathered around it, and the association counted forty-three members by 1932.

Where is Futago?

Futago lies in Takatsu ward in Kawasaki with the Tama river along its north-eastern edge, crossed by the old Oyama Kaido from east to west and the Fuchu Kaido from north to south.