Nakatosa Town

Fish are cut up at the sink by the door.

Kure Port and Fishing Town

Photo by Asturio Cantabrio (CC BY-SA 4.0)

01 ／ Kure Hachimangu's Omikoku Festival

The tōya (頭屋) that prepare the offeringsare specific households, serving in yearly turns.

The offering, omikoku (御神穀), comes in two kinds: 160 round rice cakes wrapped in a mat of cattail leaves and shaped like a bow, and cooked rice. Deep in the night before the main festival, a tōya representative carries it to the shrine with a great torch and drums. Records of the tōya survive for about 290 years, from the Edo period.

160 rice cakes wrapped in a cattail-leaf mat (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
Tōya records for about 290 years from the Edo period (Kochi Prefecture)
Designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on 24 March 2026 (Agency for Cultural Affairs)

02 ／ Weirs and stonework of Ōnomi

On a plateau where "the river is near but the water far,"they built weirs and laid channels to draw it in.

Six of the weirs on the main stream of the Shimanto River are concentrated in Ōnomi. The monk Kageishi is said to have cut a channel through the rock of Kumadaki to bring water, and a stone-built weir spans the Kudarugawa. Shingai hamlet has stone-walled terraced rice fields and fields.

Six of the weirs on the Shimanto main stream are in Ōnomi (Agency for Cultural Affairs, town website)
Upper reaches, 18 to 37 km from the river's source (town website)
Stone-walled terraces at Shingai in the Hagi-nakagawa area (town website)

03 ／ Futanajima

A rock that a family of oni carriedis said to have stayed on as the island.

Legend says that in Kure's bay, plagued by typhoon waves, a family of oni carried a great rock and saved the people. The town website adds that a hole where the oni stuck their iron club can be seen, and says the island is joined to land all the way to its tip.

Legend of the oni family carrying a rock (town website)
Joined to land up to the tip of the island (town website)
Said to be one of the Ten Views of Tosa (town website)

Living here

Seaside Kure, and Ōnomi at over 300 m above sea level.

about 6,000 people
Rural district town

The town was formed on 1 January 2006 when Nakatosa Town and Ōnomi Village merged, and covers 193.21 km². It divides broadly into the coastal former Nakatosa and the plateau of the former Ōnomi Village, opened up along the upper Shimanto River. The population is 5,567 (31 August 2026).

People living here: 6,002people
Area: 193.21km²
Households: 2,702households
Rent (average for rentals): —
Healthcare: 1 hospital ／ 7 clinics

Area and habitable land at the same scalee-Stat B1101 / B1103

Population from 2010 onward (municipal boundary changed).2006-01-01 に新設合併（大野見村）。2010年調査から市域が変わっている。

Children waiting for childcare: —3 nurseries and similar
Home purchase subsidy: —
Average annual temperature: —

These 3 items are waiting on a nationwide data source. We do not fill them with estimates.

Shape

Borders 3 municipalities.

Nakatosa Town in Japan33.329°N 133.225°E

Territory of Nakatosa Town

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

20.7km

四万十町, 津野町, 須崎市

Travel times per leg are not published by the municipality, so they are not shown.

Nakatosa Town isthis kind of town.

01Kure in Nakatosa is a port town on Tosa Bay, and in its densely built fishing quarter you can see people cleaning fish at the sink by the front door. It has been selected as a National Important Cultural Landscape, "the port and fishing town of Kure."
02Kure Hachimangu's Omikoku Festival is a nationally designated Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property; in the mountains of Ōnomi, weirs gather along the Shimanto's main stream, and Kure Bay has Futanajima, with its legend of oni.
03The Soemimizu pilgrim path toward Nanako Pass from Kure, Kure Taishō-machi Market, the Hirono Shrine's tachi-neri sword procession and the town-run Nakatosa Art Museum are also part of the town.

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Nakatosa Town official site ↗Wikipedia ↗