Ine-ura

Along the shore of a sheltered bay at the tip of the Tango Peninsula, some 230 wooden boathouses stand shoulder to shoulder at the very edge of the water, their ground floors open to the sea so that boats can be hauled straight inside. At high tide the water reaches halfway across their stone floors, and the whole row seems to float. These are the funaya of Ine-ura, a fishing settlement that stretches for about 5 km around Ine Bay on the Sea of Japan coast of Kyoto Prefecture.

The shape of the place explains the houses. Steep, rocky mountains close in on three sides and drop almost straight into the bay, leaving only a thin strip of flat land, and the water deepens quickly offshore. Ine Bay opens to the south, and the two small Aoshima islands at its mouth act as a natural breakwater, so the surface stays calm and the tidal range is only about half a metre. With no room on shore to beach boats or dry nets, fishermen built storehouses directly at the waterline. The earliest funaya were single-storey, thatched sheds of local pine, chestnut and water-resistant chinquapin; the main family houses stood across a narrow lane behind them. Semi-two-storey funaya appeared late in the Edo period, and in the Taisho era tiled roofs and full upper floors became common, helped by a boom in yellowtail fishing between roughly 1880 and 1950. When the coast road was widened in the 1930s, many funaya were rebuilt on reclaimed land and gained a second storey.

A typical funaya today is about 4 metres wide and 10 metres deep, with a sloping stone floor running down into the water and a loft above, once used for drying hemp nets. As synthetic nets and larger boats arrived, many upper floors were turned into living space, and some boathouses now serve as guesthouses or restaurants while keeping their old face to the sea. Burial mounds from the late 6th century on the hill above show the area was settled long ago, and the name Ine appears in a document of 1191. In 2005 Ine-ura was designated a national Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings, covering about 310 hectares of bay, boathouses and hillside.

Getting there

Ine-ura lies in the town of Ine, about 17 km by straight line from Miyazu. The nearest railway stations are Amanohashidate and Miyazu on the Kyoto Tango Railway, from where a coastal road leads up the peninsula. The nearest airport is Konotori Tajima Airport (TJH), about 49 km away; Osaka International Airport (ITM) is about 100 km to the south.