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Ōtsu

Prefecture capital and Core city in Kansai

  • 11 min read
  • 11 chapters
Enryaku-ji, Ishiyama-dera, Otsu Festival and Keishin Line, Ukimido, Central Otsu
User:663highland ja:User:Sunen ja:User:Bakkai Composition by Kyoww · CC BY-SA 3.0

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History

Ōtsu is part of ancient Ōmi Province and has been settled since at least the Yayoi period. It was an important center of inland water transportation on Lake Biwa and was referred to in the Man'yōshū as Shiga no Ōwada (志賀の大わだ) and Shigatsu (志賀津). It was also on the main land routes, the Tōkaidō and the Nakasendō connecting the eastern provinces with the ancient capitals of Japan. Additionally, the ancient Hokurikudō, which connected Kyoto to the provinces of northern Honshu, ran through Ōtsu. From 667 to 672, the Ōmi Ōtsu Palace, founded by Emperor Tenji, was the capital of Japan. Following the Jinshin War Ōtsu was renamed Furutsu (古津; "old port"). A new capital, Heian-kyō, (now Kyoto), was established in the immediate neighborhood in 794, and Ōtsu (meaning "big port") was revived as an important traffic point and satellite town of the capital. With the establishment of the new capital, the name of the city was restored to "Ōtsu".

Ōtsu prospered during the Edo period because of its port on Lake Biwa and as Ōtsu-juku, a major shukuba on the Tōkaidō and Nakasendō highways. The city was under direct administration of the Tokugawa shogunate, both for its strategic location and for its role as a center of travel and trade. Zeze Domain was based in Zeze, a neighboring castle town, and the smaller Katada Domain occupied the northern area of the present-day city from 1698 to 1826.

Modern period

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 saw the establishment of a new central government in Tokyo and the abolition of the han system. Numerous prefectures under control of the Meiji government were created, and part of the old province of Ōmi was designated as Ōtsu Prefecture in 1868. Several smaller prefectures were merged into Ōtsu Prefecture in 1871, which became part of present-day Shiga Prefecture on January 1, 1872. Ōtsu was named the prefectural capital of Shiga. The town of Ōtsu was established on 1 April 1889 with the creation of the modern municipalities system. It was raised to city status on 1 October 1898.

The Ōtsu incident, a failed assassination attempt on Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich of Russia (1868 – 1918, later Tsar Nicholas II), occurred on 11 May 1891. Nicholas, returning to Kyoto after a day trip to Lake Biwa, was attacked with a saber by Tsuda Sanzō (1855 – 1891), an escort policeman. Nicholas survived the assassination attempt, but the incident was seen as a crisis in Japanese-Russian relations. For a while the local populace considered renaming the city to avoid the stigma associated with the scandal, but the idea was eventually shelved.

The Lake Biwa Canal (8.7 kilometres (5.4 mi)) was constructed in the 1890s between Ōtsu and Kyoto. The canal, which was later expanded during the Taishō period, played an important role in connecting the cities, facilitating water and passenger transportation, and providing electrical energy to power Japan's first streetcar railroad services. The canal was designated a Historic Site in 1996.

The city area gradually expanded by annexation of the village of Shiga in 1932, towns of Zeze and Ishiyama in 1933, villages of Sakamoto, Ogoto, Sakashita-honmachi, Oishi and Shimoda-kamimura in 1951, and towns of Katata and Seta in 1967. On March 20, 2006, the town of Shiga (from Shiga District) ceased to exist after merging into Ōtsu.

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