Kawanishi Town

A mask and leek fell here, it is said.

Menzuka, the mask and leek mound

Photo by Uo3rt (CC BY-SA 4.0)

01 ／ Shimanoyama Kofun

Between two layers of clay,133 stone arm ornaments came out.

Shimanoyama Kofun is a keyhole-shaped tomb overlooking the Yamato River, with a surviving length of 190 m, built around the end of the 4th century. In 1996 the clay chamber in its front section was excavated, and 133 stone arm ornaments, including hoe-shaped and wheel-shaped ones, came from between the two layers of covering clay. More than 2,500 beads were also found above the coffin.

National historic site, 2002
133 stone arm ornaments
Over 2,500 beads

02 ／ Yuzaki Nebuka

A forgotten leaf onion's seedwas kept by a single farmer.

Yuzaki Nebuka is a kind of leaf onion that was widely grown across the Nara Basin before the war. It gradually fell out of cultivation because it is soft and bruises easily, and the town's guide records that a single farmer kept its seed. A research paper records that in 2003 word of a farmer saving seed at home reached the chamber of commerce, and that in 2005 the prefecture certified it as a Yamato traditional vegetable.

Widely grown before the war
2003: a farmer's seed comes to light
2005: certified Yamato traditional vegetable

03 ／ Taiko dance votive painting

A votive painting of a rain danceshows someone offering watermelon.

The Yuzaki Taiko Dance Ema, a votive painting at Itoi Shrine made in 1842 (Tenpo 13), is a prefecturally designated Tangible Folk Cultural Property. The town says it shows a person thought to be a priest of the former shrine temple lighting a lantern and offering watermelon, and calls it a valuable source for the history of watermelon growing on the Yamato plain.

Prefectural designation, 1994
Made in 1842 (Tenpo 13)
The drum's sound stands for thunder

Living here

Only local trains stop at Yuzaki Station on the Kintetsu Kashihara Line.

about 8,000 people
Rural district town

According to the Kintetsu timetable (as of 14 March 2026), trains at Yuzaki Station are local trains only, on weekdays and on weekends and holidays alike. One local train to Kyoto runs on weekday mornings but none on weekends and holidays. The town sits near the center of the Yamato Basin, where four rivers gather and flow into the Yamato River.

People living here: 8,167people
Area: 5.93km²
Households: 3,206households
Rent (average for rentals): —
Healthcare: 0 hospitals ／ 7 clinics

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

Children waiting for childcare: —1 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

Surrounded by 5 municipalities, and almost entirely flat.

Kawanishi Town in Japan34.584°N 135.774°E

Territory of Kawanishi Town

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

2.1km

三宅町, 天理市, 安堵町, 大和郡山市, 河合町

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

Kawanishi Town isthis kind of town.

01Menzuka is where, according to legend, an Okina mask and a bundle of leeks fell from the sky beside the Tera River in the Muromachi period and the villagers buried the mask on the spot; the town says Kan'ami joined the Yuzaki troupe, one of the four Yamato sarugaku troupes, and its name became the Kanze troupe
02At Mutsugata Shrine every 11 February evening, a man in a yakudoshi (unlucky) year plays a pregnant woman with a drum in his robe in the Kodeki-onda rice-planting rite, a prefectural Intangible Folk Cultural Property. In another part of the town, a first-Sunday-of-June rite carries a snake and a wild horse figure to the field god and leaves them there, and is a town cultural property
03Shell buttons, made from shells imported from countries near the equator, began as a local industry with two households in 1906 and grew to 50 households and 349 workers by 1914, the town says. Himekuwa Shrine stands just west of Shimanoyama Kofun's moat, and its main hall is said to be the old main hall of Kasuga Taisha's Wakamiya Shrine moved here

See the town as it is now.

Source: Wikidata (P2002, P2003, P2013, P2397)

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Kawanishi Town official site ↗Wikipedia ↗