Squeezed between the Sumida and Arakawa rivers, sliced with canals, and facing Tokyo Bay, Koto Ward is sometimes known as the "Venice of Tokyo." While the comparison is a considerable stretch -- many of the canals have been filled in or obscured by buildings and highways, and you certainly won't spot a gondolier -- the water features of Koto are integral to its past and its future.
In the Edo Period, canals were the main thoroughfares through the low-lying terrain east of the Sumida. Teeming with choki-bune (small boats), owai-bune (nightsoil barges), ferrymen, salt vendors, floating lumberyards, and mizu-bune (boats which carried barrels of potable water from the city center to the sea-level region) the waterways played a vital part in the urban commerce of shitamachi (the old, downtown area of Tokyo).
Hiroyuki Deguchi, cultural historian at Koto Ward Office, noted that even a visit to Tomioka Hachimangu (1627), a shrine dedicated to the god of war, used to be made by boat. "People would dock right in front of the torii gate," he said. Once on the waterfront, the shrine later became accessible by canal, but even that canal doesn't exist today.