8 Hard-to-Read Kyoto Place Names — Read Them and You're a Local
Kyoto's map is dotted with place names almost no one can read on sight. Why are they so hard? In most cases it's because a thousand years of history as the capital are baked right into the name. Here are eight of the most striking, each with its correct reading, its origin (where the story is disputed, we say so), and a source. That includes 一口 (Imoarai), arguably the hardest read in the whole prefecture.
Place names are fossils of a land's memory. Industries brought by immigrants from the continent, the funerals of Heian-era nobles, the tales of the imperial court, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi's redesign of the city — trace Kyoto's hard-to-read names and you realize the events in the textbooks are literally underfoot.
Below we give not just the right reading but the answer to "why this character, why this sound," leaning on official and primary sources and citing them. Where an origin isn't settled, we don't force a verdict — we flag it as a matter of competing theories.
Reads you pass every day on station signs
太秦 (Uzumasa) Uzumasa
Nothing about the kanji hints at "Uzumasa" — read straight, 太秦 would sound like "taishin." This was the base of the powerful Hata clan, immigrants of continental descent. When the Hata delivered silk textiles to the court, they are said to have piled the silk up high (uzutakaku) and were granted the title Uzumasa — written 禹豆満佐 — to which the characters 太秦 were later assigned (Nihon Shoki, the chronicle of Emperor Yūryaku). Kōryū-ji, the temple founded by the Hata, also stands here.
Source: 京都観光Navi（京都市公式） Wikipedia「太秦」
帷子ノ辻 (Katabira-no-Tsuji) Katabira-no-Tsuji
The origin is disputed. By one legend, when Empress Tachibana no Kachiko (Danrin) — consort of Emperor Saga — was carried to her funeral, the katabira (a thin unlined robe) draped over her coffin was caught by the wind and fluttered to the ground near this crossroads (tsuji), giving the name. Another tradition derives it from the terrain: a spot with a cliff on one side — hira in old Japanese — so "kata-hira" (one-sided slope) shifted into Katabira.
Source: 京都新聞「帷子ノ辻の由来」 Wikipedia「帷子辻」
椥辻 (Nagitsuji) Nagitsuji
The first character, 椥, is a kokuji — a character invented in Japan — standing for the nagi tree (a podocarp). You won't find it in a Chinese dictionary, which is part of what makes the name a stumper. The place is said to be named for a great nagi tree that once grew nearby. As the nearest station to the Yamashina Ward office, it's an everyday hard-to-read name for locals.
Source: 京都通百科事典「椥辻」 京都市交通局「東西線 椥辻駅」
御陵 (Misasagi) Misasagi
Read by its ordinary sounds, 御陵 would be "goryō"; here it is the native word misasagi, meaning the tomb of an emperor or other exalted figure. The place and station take their name from the nearby Yamashina Mausoleum (Yamashina no Misasagi; the burial mound itself is called Gobyōno Kofun), which the Imperial Household Agency identifies as the tomb of Emperor Tenji.
Source: 宮内庁「天智天皇 山科陵」 京都市交通局「東西線 御陵駅 時刻表」
Names of streets and pleasure quarters
先斗町 (Pontochō) Pontochō
There's no agreed-upon origin — and the kanji give you no help, since none of them ordinarily sounds like "pon." One theory traces the name to Portuguese: ponta (point/tip), ponte (bridge), or ponto (point). Another imagines the strip — hemmed by the Kamo-gawa to the east and the Takase-gawa to the west — as a tsuzumi (hand drum) stretched between two skins, which goes "pon" when you strike it. Both stories are still told.
Source: 先斗町のれん会「先斗町の歴史」
天使突抜 (Tenshi-Tsukinuke) Tenshi-Tsukinuke
"Piercing through an angel" is an unsettling name, but its origin is clear-cut — and tenshi here means a deity, not a winged angel. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, during his urban redesign in the Tenshō era (1573–92), drove a new street north–south straight through the grounds of Gojō Tenjin-gū, an ancient shrine also known as the "Tenshi shrine" and reckoned among the oldest within the old city. That street, the Tenshi-Tsukinuke-dōri, gave the district its name.
Names born from how the land came to be
化野 (Adashino) Adashino
Adashi means "fleeting, vain," evoking impermanence — a meaning you'd never guess from the kanji 化 ("change") and 野 ("field"). Along with Toribeno in Higashiyama and Rendaino in the north of the city, this was a burial ground from the Heian period onward (at first by wind burial, leaving bodies exposed). The countless stone Buddhas at Nenbutsu-ji are said to memorialize the dead who had no one to mourn them.
一口 (Imoarai) Imoarai
Here the kanji simply mean "one mouth" — read literally you'd say "hitokuchi" or "ichiguchi," nowhere near "Imoarai." By one theory the village was once ringed on three sides by Ogura Pond, with a single entrance on the west, so it was written 一口 ("one opening"). By another, the name comes from imiharai — a purification "warding off" the epidemics that followed floods — which slurred over time into "imoarai." Neither is settled.
Source: Wikipedia「東一口（ひがしいもあらい）」 京都通百科事典「一口」
FAQ
What's an efficient way to tour Kyoto's hard-to-read place names?
Pair the Saga sights: Adashino Nenbutsu-ji and Katabira-no-Tsuji sit close together and ride the same Randen line. Pontochō in the city center is at its most atmospheric after dusk, when the lanterns come on. Out in Yamashina, Nagitsuji and Misasagi are just two Tōzai subway stops apart, so hopping between them is painless.
Which of these names do people most often get wrong?
The classic traps are reading 太秦 by its on-yomi as "taishin," 先斗町 as "sentochō," and 一口 as "hitokuchi." The correct readings are Uzumasa, Pontochō, and Imoarai. The good news: each one is so odd that once it clicks, it tends to stay put.
Any tricks for remembering hard-to-read place names?
Don't rote-memorize the reading; memorize the story behind it. Latch onto a meaning or anecdote — Adashino as "the fleeting," Katabira-no-Tsuji as Empress Danrin's windblown robe — and the reading sticks. Names that double as station stops have a built-in advantage: you re-read the sign every time you ride through, so they sink in on their own.
Is Kyoto the only place with lots of hard-to-read names?
Plenty of regions have them, but Kyoto stands out for sheer density: immigrant industry, funeral grounds, court tales, and an early-modern city makeover all layer into its names. Different parts of Japan each have their own "looks readable but isn't" — and gathering those is exactly what this quiz series is for.