Spared of the noise and traffic, and with a larger volume of goods coming in both faster and cheaper, the population density increased. When the 9.7km long and 7 meters wide 2 canal was completed in 1614-construction took about three years-it changed the face of the city. The canal flowed in all weathers all hours of the day and night with no more noise than the soft trampling of the boat operator on the towpaths next to the canal. And since no feed was needed it meant that no valuable agricultural land had to be set aside (the “ecological footprint” of the canal was far smaller than a pony based system). This represents an increase in weight efficiency of about twenty-two point five times over that of a pony. The new canal meant that the same muscle power (either pony or man or both) could pull a boat carrying a maximum load of 2700kg at walking speed. At walking speed, it was expected that a man could carry 60kg, a pony could carry 120kg and a small simple cart pulled by either man or pony, could take 180kg.
It was built for a continuous water depth of a mere thirty centimeters, about twice the minimum needed for the boats they wanted to use.Īt this time, land transport was not very efficient. In 1610, the Suminokura family got permission from the government, and using their own money they contracted teams of workers to dig out a canal parallel to the river, connecting the port of Fushimi with central Kyoto, to be lined with stone from local quarries. The daily comings and goings of men and animals, more or less non-stop, wasn’t popular with the locals either. The Kamo river which runs through Kyoto was too irregular for transports, so goods arriving by boat mostly had to be unloaded at Fushimi, a town about ten kilometers south of Kyoto, repacked to ponies and transported on roads through the southern neighborhoods of Kyoto before spreading out to their final destinations. Suminokura 1 soon realized that transporting goods into Kyoto was a difficult and expensive business. The Suminokura family had made a name for themselves in finance, medicine and overseas trade, with offices as far away as distant Annan (the Japanese name of the country today called Vietnam).
A merchant by the name of Suminokura Ryōi is given the contract to supply building materials for the renovation of Hōkō-ji, a temple in central Kyoto designed to rival the famous temples of nearby Nara. Kyoto, the imperial capital of Japan, spring 1608.
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