Suminokura Ryoi was no ordinary merchant. A shipping magnate who had already opened river routes across central Japan, he undertook the excavation of the Takase River canal in 1611, during the Keicho Era, to transport materials needed for the reconstruction of the Great Buddha at Hokoji temple. The canal ran from Nijoukirimachi southward, and shallow-draft boats called takasebune carried lumber, charcoal, rice, and other goods between the port of Fushimi and central Kyoto. The street that grew along its eastern bank was first called Korikichou Street. But as warehouses multiplied -- timber yards, charcoal depots, rice stores -- the district earned the name that stuck: Kiyamachi. Neighboring streets still bear the names of their original trades: Zaimokumachi for lumber, Komeyamachi for rice, Nabeyamachi for pots. By 1762, topographical records defined Kiyamachi as the stretch from Kitanijou Street to Minamigojou.

By the mid-Edo period in the eighteenth century, the warehouses began giving way to inns, restaurants, and drinking establishments as travelers and merchants flooded the district. But it was in the final turbulent years of the Edo era -- the 1850s and 1860s -- that Kiyamachi took on a darker, more dramatic role. The narrow street and its warren of back rooms became a meeting ground for loyalists plotting the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate. Sakamoto Ryoma, perhaps the most famous revolutionary of the Bakumatsu period, frequented Kiyamachi's establishments. So did Kido Takayoshi, Omura Masujiro, and Sakuma Shozan -- men whose secret conversations in these teahouses and inns helped shape the Meiji Restoration. Stone monuments scattered through the downtown stretch of Kiyamachi commemorate these loyalists today, standing quietly among the neon signs and cocktail bars.

In 1895, during the Meiji period's rush toward modernization, a streetcar line was laid along Kiyamachi, running from Nijo to Gojo. For a few decades, electric trams rattled past the old canal where takasebune boats had once glided. But by the 1920s, the expanding Kawaramachi Street absorbed the tram route, and Kiyamachi returned to quieter rhythms. The twentieth century brought a new kind of beauty to the street: cherry blossom trees planted along the Takase River. Every spring, the pale pink canopy transforms the canal into one of Kyoto's most beloved hanami spots, the blossoms reflected in the shallow water below. A paved sidewalk now runs the length of the street, and in 2003, the Kiyamachi district was officially designated a beautifully developed community of importance in Kyoto.

Walk Kiyamachi Street between Sanjo and Shijo after sunset and the lumber-yard origins feel impossibly remote. The narrow lane pulses with the soft glow of lanterns from izakaya, the chatter spilling from second-floor cocktail bars, the aroma of yakitori grills mixing with the green scent of the canal. Restaurants serve not only Japanese food but cuisines from around the world, reflecting Kyoto's quiet cosmopolitanism. Tea houses and coffee shops occupy the quieter blocks to the north and south. The Takase River itself, barely a few meters wide, still flows alongside the street, a living thread connecting today's nightlife corridor to the seventeenth-century merchant who dug it. That continuity is the real magic of Kiyamachi: four hundred years of reinvention layered onto the same narrow strip of land beside the same shallow canal, each era leaving its mark without erasing the last.