The sweet, dark preserve on every Japanese breakfast tray is named after an island in Tokyo. That island is named after a village in Osaka. Both are still there, and almost nobody visits the second one.
Tsukuda, Chūō City, TokyoTsukuda, Nishiyodogawa, OsakaFacts checked October 2026
You have done monja in Tsukishima and walked the Tsukiji outer market at 8 a.m. Maybe you bought a small pack of tsukudani (佃煮) there because the stall owner made you taste it. This piece starts five minutes' walk from those monja shops, on a block of wooden houses most people pass on their way to the station. Then it takes you to Osaka, to the place those houses were named after.
Why bother with this over another food street? Because it is one of the few places in Japan where a migration from four hundred years ago is still visible on both ends. The Tokyo side gives you a canal, two working tsukudani shops and a shrine festival with poles that live under water. The Osaka side gives you a quiet neighbourhood shrine, a stone marker and a priest who still writes about his Tokyo cousins. What you give up: the Osaka half is plain, residential and has no shop selling the food it gave its name to. You come for the story, not the scenery.
Tokyo side
The island that was built to order佃島 · Tsukudajima
Tsukuda (佃) is the old core of the Tsukishima district, a few streets around a narrow canal called the Tsukuda-bori (佃堀). It began as a tidal flat at the mouth of the Sumida River. Fishermen from Osaka reclaimed it, and Chūō City dates the finished island to 1644.
They were in Edo because of a favour. In the 1580s Tokugawa Ieyasu needed to cross the Kanzaki River (神崎川) in Settsu, near today's Osaka, and fishermen from a village called Tamino (田蓑) rowed him over. The reward was the right to fish anywhere, tax-free. Tamino Jinja in Osaka puts the crossing only in "the Tenshō era"; other sources say 1586, and a popular version ties it to Ieyasu's escape after the Honnōji Incident of 1582. Nobody agrees, and the article will not pretend to know.
What everyone agrees on is the name. Ieyasu told the fishermen to farm rice fields (田) as well as fish. So the village took a new character: 佃, a person (亻) next to a field (田). When Ieyasu set up his government in Edo, he brought the Tsukuda men east to supply fish to the castle. They moved in stages between about 1590 and 1612, and named their new island after home.
The streets are small and the houses are low. Chūō City notes the island narrowly escaped both the 1923 earthquake fires and the wartime bombing, which is why it still looks older than the tower blocks around it.
Getting there: Tsukishima Station (月島駅), Exit 6 · Tokyo Metro Yūrakuchō Line or Toei Ōedo Line · 5 min walk
When: Weekday mornings are quietest. The streets are residential, so keep your voice down.
Reality check: The old part is about three blocks. You will see it all in thirty minutes.
Same name, same shape of life: both Tsukudas are flat islands boxed in by river water. Tokyo's was built from nothing to match the one at home.
A shrine whose spirit came by boat住吉神社 · Sumiyoshi Jinja
The fishermen brought their god with them. Sumiyoshi Jinja says its spirit was divided from the Sumiyoshi shrine of Osaka's Tsukuda, which is today's Tamino Jinja, and carried east by 33 fishermen and a priest named Hiraoka Gondayū. It was enshrined on 29 June 1646. The Hiraoka family has held the priesthood ever since.
That date became a holiday of sorts. The national cooperative of tsukudani makers fixed 29 June as Tsukudani Day in 2003; the 29 can be read as "tsuku".
The thing to know about is the main festival, the Hon-matsuri (本祭り), every three years around 6 August. For it, six banners 18 metres tall go up around the island. Their poles spend the three years in between buried in the mud of the Tsukuda-bori canal, because wood kept under water does not rot. The shrine says the shogunate allowed the banners in 1798, and they are dug up, raised, and buried again each cycle. The festival also has an octagonal portable shrine and a procession on boats.
The last Hon-matsuri was 6–10 August 2026, the shrine's 380th year. On the three-year cycle the next would fall in 2029, but the shrine had not posted it when this was written. In the other years there is a smaller festival on 6–7 August.
Getting there: Tsukishima Station (月島駅), Exit 6 · 5 min walk · 佃1-1-14
When: Grounds open 24 hours. Office 8:00–16:30. Main festival every three years in early August (last: 2026).
Reality check: Outside August, the canal is just a canal. The poles are underground and there is nothing to see of them.
The Osaka shrine is more than seven centuries older than the island named after its village. The ferry outlived the shogunate by a century.
Two shops, where there were three天安 · 丸久 · Tenyasu, Marukyū
Why tsukudani at all? The Tsukuda men's job in Edo was to send whitebait (白魚, shirauo) to the shogun's kitchen, from November to March. The fish too small to send, and the catch from days too rough to sell, were simmered down with salt and later soy so they would keep. Served with sake at the shrine festival, the preserve travelled with visitors and took the island's name with it.
The Osaka shrine's founding story also features whitebait: a fisherman offering it to Empress Jingū. The same small silver fish sits at both ends of the story.
For most of living memory there were three old shops facing each other here. Tanakaya (田中屋) closed on 15 August 2026. The priest of the Osaka shrine wrote about it the week before; its tiny-shrimp tsukudani had been his childhood taste, carried to Osaka by visitors from Tokyo. Two remain.
Tenyasu (天安) opened in 1837. The name joins the era name Tenpō (天保) to the founder's name, Yasukichi (安吉). Chūō City lists the shop as a wooden townhouse standing on the same spot for about 180 years. Marukyū (丸久) opened in 1859 and is run by the 15th generation; it rebuilt in 2009 to meet earthquake standards. Both sell by weight from trays, so you can buy 100 grams of one kind instead of a gift box.
Point at a tray and ask for the smallest amount: これを百グラムください (kore o hyaku guramu kudasai).
If you can't choose, ask which is the oldest flavour: いちばん昔からの味はどれですか (ichiban mukashi kara no aji wa dore desu ka).
Shop
Founded
Hours
Closed
Per 100 g (examples)
Tenyasu 天安本店 佃1-3-14
1837
9:00–18:00 (2–7 Jan: to 15:00)
31 Dec, 1 Jan
Edo-style ¥500 · shrimp ¥450 · ginger ¥550
Marukyū 丸久 佃1-2-10
1859
10:30–18:00
Wednesdays, New Year, summer break
shrimp ¥490 · kelp ¥600 · whitebait ¥780
Tanakaya 田中屋 佃1-3-13
late Edo
Closed for good, 15 August 2026
Getting there: Both are on the canal, 2–3 min from Sumiyoshi Jinja
When: Go before Marukyū's Wednesday closing catches you. Prices are from the shops' own lists; check on the day.
Reality check: Whether either shop takes cards could not be confirmed. Bring cash. Tsukudani is sweet and very salty; 100 g lasts a long time.
A lighthouse with a toilet underneath佃公園 · Tsukuda Park
Walk two minutes north to the river. Two stones from 1927, set when steam boats took over the ferry, mark the old Tsukuda crossing; one is in Tsukuda Park (佃公園), the other is in storage during bridge work. The ferry ran from 1645 until 1964, when the Tsukuda Ōhashi bridge opened over your head. It was the last ferry left on the Sumida.
Next to it is a white six-sided tower. It copies the Ishikawajima lighthouse of 1866, which was paid for with oil-pressing wages earned by inmates of the labour camp on the next island. The copy went up in 1989, and the ground floor is a public toilet.
Getting there: 佃1-11-4 · 3 min from the shops along the river
When: Open park, any time
Reality check: It is a small riverside park. The value is in knowing what you are looking at.
Tsukudani is what the castle did not take. The island's name went into the national pantry with the leftovers.
Osaka side
The village they left田蓑神社 · Tamino Jinja
Twelve minutes from Umeda on a Hanshin local, Chibune Station (千船駅) sits on an island about 2.5 km long between two rivers. This is Tsukuda, Nishiyodogawa (西淀川区佃). It was factories from the 1930s; since the 1970s many sites have become apartment blocks. Nothing here sells itself as the home of tsukudani.
Tamino Jinja (田蓑神社) is the reason to come. The shrine dates itself to 869. It was renamed Sumiyoshi in 1741 and given back the old village name, Tamino, in 1868, so that the name that existed before 佃 would not disappear. A sub-shrine to Ieyasu has stood in the grounds since 1631, a thank-you for the river crossing.
Look for these, all in the grounds: a stone marked 「佃漁民ゆかりの地」 ("place connected with the Tsukuda fishermen"), designated by Osaka City and listed among Japan's 100 fishing-village heritage sites; a torii dated 1511; a pair of stone guardian dogs dated 1702, which the shrine says are the oldest of their kind in Osaka Prefecture; and a rebuilt pillar kept as a record of the 1995 Hanshin earthquake, which tilted the worship hall.
The shrine has one priest, and he writes a blog. In August 2026 he went to Tokyo for the Hon-matsuri, his second time, and wrote that the Tokyo shrine had grown to serve Tsukishima, Kachidoki, Harumi and Toyomi, while his own stayed a neighbourhood shrine. Tell him, or whoever is at the office, where you have been:
東京の佃島にも行ってきました (Tōkyō no Tsukudajima ni mo itte kimashita).
Getting there: Osaka-Umeda Station (大阪梅田駅, Hanshin) → Hanshin Main Line local (普通) to Chibune Station (千船駅), 5 stops, 12 min, ¥200 · then about 15 min on foot · 佃1-18-14
When: Grounds open 24 hours. Summer festival 31 July–1 August with drum floats and night stalls; autumn festival 16–17 October with children's sumo.
Reality check: Expresses do not stop at Chibune; take the local. There is no café or shop culture around the shrine, and no tsukudani maker could be found in the neighbourhood.
The whole Tokyo side fits inside an hour. Do it before lunch so the shops are open and the canal is quiet.
The honest part
This is a story trip. On the Tokyo side you will see one canal, a shrine, two shops and a park, all in under an hour. On the Osaka side you will see one shrine in an ordinary residential district, 15 minutes from a local station. If you need either place to be pretty on its own, skip it.
The dates do not line up. The river crossing is "Tenshō era", 1586 or 1582 depending on who tells it; the move to Edo is 1590 or 1612; the island is 1644 or 1645. The shrines themselves disagree with each other. This article gives ranges where the sources split.
Tanakaya is gone, and a shop that has lasted a century can still close without warning. Marukyū closes on Wednesdays. The festival you would most want to see happens once in three years, and the next one has not been announced.
You cannot do both sides in one day without a bullet train in between. Treat them as two short add-ons: one on a Tokyo morning, one on an Osaka afternoon.
If you only have one day
This is the Tokyo morning. Add Osaka on whatever day you are there.
Tsukishima Station, Exit 6. Walk to Sumiyoshi Jinja.
Shrine. Then cross Tsukuda Kobashi and walk the canal both ways.
Tenyasu (open from 9:00), then Marukyū when it opens at 10:30. Buy 100 g at each.
Tsukuda Park: ferry stone and lighthouse.
Walk back through Tsukishima; the monja shops open around lunch.
Osaka add-on, about 90 minutes: Hanshin local from Osaka-Umeda to Chibune (12 min), walk 15 min to Tamino Jinja, 30 min in the grounds, walk back. If you are running late, drop the Tokyo park and keep the shops; on the Osaka side, there is nothing to drop.