On November 3, 2024, a walking tour event was held in the Yoshiwara district of Maizuru City, Kyoto Prefecture, where traditional wooden houses line the bay. Participants walked around the charming district, which has been promoted as the "Venice of the East," with a guide map created this year in hand.
The Yoshiwara district is home to architecture unique to a fishing town, such as boathouses, and since 2020, Professor Tsuruoka Noriyoshi (Japanese architectural history) of Kyoto Women's University and others have been investigating it. Kyoto Women's University students created a guide map that clearly conveys the sights and architectural styles, and it was published on the Maizuru City website in June 2024.
This event was organized by the Yoshiwara Historical Landscape Preservation and Utilization Executive Committee, a group of local residents aiming to have the district designated as a traditional buildings preservation district, so that participants could actually walk around the town using the guide map.
Participants looked around the fishing town and took photos. The interiors of the three buildings were given special permission to be opened to the public, where local residents and Maizuru city officials explained that "a distinctive feature of Yoshiwara is that on the side facing the cove there are 'production sites' such as boathouses and seafood processing workshops, and on the other side there are 'living spaces', next to each other."
