Yoshino River

The river  Yoshino has been praised for being more blue than the colour indigo. Indigo has  been one of the famous products in Tokushima county since the middle ages.

The river  Yoshino has been call Saburo Shikoku. Shikoku is the name of the island which is  one of the four main islands that make up Japan. In the middle ages, there were  only three inhabited islands, Honshu, the biggest, Kyushu, the second, and  Shikoku the third. The biggest river on each island were names as three  brothers; the river Tone is Taro Bando the first brother, in the Tokyo area, the  river Chikugo is Jiro Tsukushi, the second brother in Kyushu and the river  Yoshino is Saburo Shikoku, the third brother in Shikoku.

Shikoku  (trans: four counties) is divided into four counties since the 19th century. The  river Yoshino begins in Ehime county and runs through Tokushima county from west  to east between the Sanuki mountain range and the Shikoku mountain range. It is  194km long collecting 356 tributaries.

In the  upper area, where all the mountain ranges in Shikoku meet, the mountains are  high and sharp. The highest mountain in Tokushima county is called Mount Tsurugi  (trans; sword) which is 1955m high. This height and the sharpness of the  mountain is why the area developed hidden villages by the beaten samurai in the  14th century and has been the practice ground for the mountain samurai for many  centuries. The river floods several times a year because of typhoons. The  torrent in the upper area of the river has been strong enough to break up rocks  in the old times. This created the beautiful pebbled beaches in the lower area  of the river, especially in the wide stretched pebbled beach in front of the  Shiro-yama where the Kawashima shrine is located.

The river  Yoshine had been the life of Tokushima county until the railway was built in  1915. More than a thousand white-sailed river boats went up and down the river.  They carried rice, wheat and oithr grains, fertiliser, miso, soy sauce, salt  seafoods, crafts, indigo and sundries from the lower area. Domestic wood,  charcoal, tobacco, silk cocoons, devils tongue ( a root vegetable) paper, furs,  horseradish and more from the upper area. The boats had flat bottoms so that  they could be sailed in the shallows by the two men who crewed them. Bamboo and  wood were poled down in rafts.

When the  bank was built at Hama (trans; beach) in Kawashima town, the remains of the  river port was buried underneath it. The only remains you can see at Hama is the  stone Buddha. A festival is held every August for this stone Buddha to pray for  the spirits of the people who died on the river and a hundred model boats with  candles are floated.

The  Kawashima bridge was built at Hamal where the little ferryboat used to cross the  river. Although the bridge may go under water when the river floods, it is  useful for pilgrims on the course from Kirihata temple, the tenth temple, to the  eleventh, Fujii temple.of the eighty eight temple Shikoku pilgrimage.