Keage Incline

Introduction

The Keage Incline is a 582-metre stretch of track left by the Meiji-era Lake Biwa Canal. At Keage the canal drops between two different water levels that boats could not sail between, so from 1891 a cable-hauled trolley carried each boat bodily up and down the 36-metre rise, linking freight from Lake Biwa into Kyoto. Trucks made it obsolete in 1948, and the line is preserved as a National Historic Site. You can walk the rails: rusty track and old wooden sleepers run to the top of the slope, lined by nearly ninety Somei-Yoshino cherry trees that arch into a pink tunnel from late March into early April, one of Kyoto's defining spring images. At the top stand a reconstructed boat and a full-size trolley that make the mechanics plain. The Nejiri-manpo at the entrance, a brick tunnel whose courses twist in a spiral, belongs to the same canal works and deserves a detour. It is free and open at all hours, but unlit at night, and the gravel and sleepers turn slippery in rain, so come early morning or towards evening for photographs; during cherry season the 6 to 7 am hour is quietest. Five minutes downhill sits Nanzenji's Suirokaku aqueduct, followed by the free Lake Biwa Canal Museum, Heian Shrine and the Philosopher's Path, a ready-made canal walk through southern Higashiyama.

✨ Highlights

🛈 Practical Info