Last Updated: Jun 22, 2025

In Imabari City

A Shipbuilding Town in Ehime Prefecture

This story was originally published on donnykimball.com and has been syndicated here on Medium.

Welcome to Ehime Prefecture’s Imabari City. Located in Shikoku on the far side of the famed Shimanami Kaido — a series of bridges that connects Shikoku with Japan’s main island of Honshu — this important shipbuilding town is the second-largest city in all of Ehime. Renowned nowadays for its high-quality towels, Imabari will, for most, be the endpoint of their journey across the Seto Inland Sea via the Shimanami Kaido. That said, there are a number of standalone allures in the area that are worth seeing.

In terms of history and culture, what is now Imabari City has long been an incredibly important strategic point for the control of the Seto Inland Sea. It was formerly controlled by the Murakami Suigun, a maritime clan that can be thought of as the “pirates” of the Seto Inland Sea during Japan’s century-long, bloody civil war. Thereafter, Imabari went on to be built up as a bustling castle town centered around the stronghold of Imabari Castle during the reign of the Tokugawa shoguns.

Thereafter, Imabari grew to become the biggest nexus of shipbuilding and maritime servicing facilities in all of Japan. In addition to its textile industry — which is responsible for upwards of 60% of all towel production in Japan — this ability to…