Katata/堅田

About Kataｔa

Kataｔa is an old lakeside town located in the west in Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan,and the north in Otsu, Shiga,Japan. Katata is in the place where the width of Lake Biwa is the narrowest, so it is a key point of traffic for many years. There is Biwako-ohashi bridge among Moriyama on the opposite shore now. The biggest free city in Lake Biwa was built by people of Katata called the Katatasyu (Kozoku) to the medieval time. It is told that the Kozoku made its living by an usher, transportation business, a fishing, the shipbuilding industry, etc. Katata was loved by the literary man including Matsuo Basho, and the literary monument is built in here and there of the town . It is a beautiful town where rows of houses old even now remain. As for Katata, Ukimido（浮御堂） is known as one of Omi Hakkei （近江八景）or Eight Views of Omi made famous by Hiroshige's picturesque woodblock prints. Ukimido is a temple which appears on Lake Biwa, crosses a small bridge and can visit. Two years before calling on Honkatata for the first time, I was surprised at the rows of houses carried out calmly that it could be old and new balance and the numerousness of too much temples and shrines. There were also nine temples and shrines including Ukimido within the limits of only 400m from Ukimido. which -- although -- it was valued from local you and had sighed in the life. If you walk along Katata (especially Honkatata), it understands well, but very automatically, people who live there make an offering thing a night-light and a monument, prune a hedge, they build the house suitable for rows of houses, and are living. I without a hometown decided Katata to be my hometown, rode on Kosei Line, and it has gone to sometimes take a photograph. If Katata's goodness reaches people which were able to see the photograph, there is no such delightful thing like this. In Katata, the local adhesion type Art Festival by the young artist "Kozokunosato Art Project" is once opened by the year.It participates in the guide tour in December (the 3rd ), 2007, and from people which met, I will attach that I had the cause which announces a photograph given here, and will make it into gratitude.