Walk around Shimizu and one name keeps appearing: Jirocho Street, the Jirocho birth house, temples “connected to Jirocho.” The most famous person in this port town isn’t a footballer or an anime character — it’s a gang boss born in 1820. But here’s what makes him worth twenty minutes of your port day: the fighting is the least interesting thing about him. A man who spent the first half of his life as the most feared outlaw boss on the Tokaido road spent the second half building this port, clearing farmland, and opening an English school. That swing is why Shimizu still tells his story — and why the story makes every street here more interesting to walk.
🇯🇵 日本語版はこちら: 日本語で読む
The Rice Merchant’s Son
Jirocho was born in 1820 in the port quarter of Shimizu, the son of a boatman, and was adopted by his uncle Jirohachi Yamamoto, a rice merchant. His real name was Chogoro Yamamoto; “Jirocho” is simply short for “Jirohachi’s Chogoro” [[1]](https://www.ndl.go.jp/portrait/datas/278) [[2]](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B8%85%E6%B0%B4%E6%AC%A1%E9%83%8E%E9%95%B7).
Raised to be a merchant, he abandoned the family business young and entered the world of gamblers and toughs — the yakuza of the late Edo period. Operating along the Tokaido, the great highway linking Edo and Kyoto, he rose with lieutenants like Omasa, Komasa, and Mori no Ishimatsu to become known as the mightiest boss on the road [[2]](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B8%85%E6%B0%B4%E6%AC%A1%E9%83%8E%E9%95%B7). Later storytellers, and then film studios, turned this period into Japan’s answer to the Western: the noble outlaw of the Tokaido. Much of it is embellished. The verifiable part of his life — the remarkable part — comes next.
The Night That Changed Everything: The Kanrin Maru Incident
In September 1868, during Japan’s civil war between the falling shogunate and the new imperial government, history sailed straight into Shimizu harbor.
The Kanrin Maru — the celebrated ship that eight years earlier had carried the first Japanese embassy across the Pacific to San Francisco — was by then in the hands of shogunate loyalists. Attacked at anchor in Shimizu by new-government forces, her crew was killed, and the bodies were left floating in the harbor. No one dared touch them: burying “rebels” risked the new government’s wrath [[3]](https://jirocho.com/isai/retuden-1.html).
Jirocho acted. He had his men recover the dead and bury them on the Mukojima shore. Questioned by the authorities, he gave the answer Shimizu still quotes: “Once a man is dead, there is no imperial side and no rebel side. The dead are all Buddhas.” [[2]](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B8%85%E6%B0%B4%E6%AC%A1%E9%83%8E%E9%95%B7) [[3]](https://jirocho.com/isai/retuden-1.html)
Word reached Tesshu Yamaoka, the shogunate statesman who had helped negotiate the peaceful surrender of Edo. Deeply impressed, he brushed the three characters for “Tomb of the Valiant” — *Soshi-bo* — for the grave marker, beginning a lifelong friendship between the samurai and the boss. The tomb still stands in Shimizu today [[3]](https://jirocho.com/isai/retuden-1.html) [[4]](https://jirocho.com/shiseki.html).
The Second Life: A Boss Builds a Port
With the Meiji era, Jirocho left the outlaw world behind with astonishing ease and reinvented himself as a local entrepreneur and social reformer. The list of his projects reads like a development plan a century ahead of schedule [[5]](https://shimizuareahistory.wordpress.com/2023/04/11/%E5%9C%B0%E5%85%83%E3%81%AE%E7%99%BA%E5%B1%95%E3%81%AB%E8%B2%A2%E7%8C%AE%E3%81%97%E3%81%9F%E3%80%8C%E6%B8%85%E6%B0%B4%E3%81%AE%E6%AC%A1%E9%83%8E%E9%95%B7%E3%80%8D/).
A wharf for the tea trade. To let Shizuoka’s green tea ship directly from Shimizu instead of through middlemen, he brokered relationships among local tea merchants, Shimizu shipping houses, and the exporters of Yokohama, and pushed for new wharf development — groundwork for Shimizu’s later rise as Japan’s great tea-export port [[5]](https://shimizuareahistory.wordpress.com/2023/04/11/%E5%9C%B0%E5%85%83%E3%81%AE%E7%99%BA%E5%B1%95%E3%81%AB%E8%B2%A2%E7%8C%AE%E3%81%97%E3%81%9F%E3%80%8C%E6%B8%85%E6%B0%B4%E3%81%AE%E6%AC%A1%E9%83%8E%E9%95%B7%E3%80%8D/).
Farmland at the foot of Mt. Fuji. From 1874 he led the clearing of wasteland on Fuji’s southern slopes — a seventeen-year project, backed by the prefecture and worked partly by model prisoners, that opened roughly 76 hectares of farmland [[3]](https://jirocho.com/isai/retuden-1.html) [[5]](https://shimizuareahistory.wordpress.com/2023/04/11/%E5%9C%B0%E5%85%83%E3%81%AE%E7%99%BA%E5%B1%95%E3%81%AB%E8%B2%A2%E7%8C%AE%E3%81%97%E3%81%9F%E3%80%8C%E6%B8%85%E6%B0%B4%E3%81%AE%E6%AC%A1%E9%83%8E%E9%95%B7%E3%80%8D/).
An English school and Western medicine. He also saw what the new era would demand: he opened an English school in Shimizu and invited Western-trained physicians. One young man from Miho village who studied there later put his English to use across the Pacific in Hawaii [[5]](https://shimizuareahistory.wordpress.com/2023/04/11/%E5%9C%B0%E5%85%83%E3%81%AE%E7%99%BA%E5%B1%95%E3%81%AB%E8%B2%A2%E7%8C%AE%E3%81%97%E3%81%9F%E3%80%8C%E6%B8%85%E6%B0%B4%E3%81%AE%E6%AC%A1%E9%83%8E%E9%95%B7%E3%80%8D/).
A man who made his name with his fists spent his last decades investing in harbors, agriculture, education, and medicine. By his death in 1893, Jirocho was no longer “the boss” — he was the benefactor of Shimizu [[1]](https://www.ndl.go.jp/portrait/datas/278).
Why He’s Still the Local Hero
Fictional heroes fade. Jirocho hasn’t, because for Shimizu he isn’t fiction — he’s one of the people who built the port this town lives on. At the Shimizu Minato Matsuri each August, processions and dances in Jirocho’s honor share the streets with the great kappore parade, and the block around his birth house is still a shopping street named Jirocho Street. A port festival starring a former outlaw sounds odd until you know the story; then it’s the only casting that makes sense.
Walking the Jirocho Trail
The best part: you can verify this whole story on foot. Every site below is within walking distance or a short ride of the port area.
The Jirocho Birth House (Jirocho Street). The merchant townhouse where he grew up survives intact and is a nationally registered cultural property, displaying period furnishings, his belongings, and photographs. Free entry; weekdays 10:00–16:00, weekends and holidays to 17:00, closed Tuesdays [[6]](https://www.city.shizuoka.lg.jp/s6725/s005260.html) [[7]](https://www.visit-shizuoka.com/spot/detail_355.html). It appears as #7 in our 20 Things to Do in Shimizu.
The Funayado Suehiro memorial house. A reconstruction of the boatmen’s inn Jirocho ran on the harbor in his final years, with exhibits on his English school and personal effects, plus a tea corner serving a local sweet named for him with matcha [[8]](https://www.visit-shizuoka.com/spots/detail.php?kanko=242).
The Soshi-bo tomb. The grave of the Kanrin Maru dead, buried by Jirocho, under the three characters brushed by Tesshu Yamaoka [[4]](https://jirocho.com/shiseki.html).
Baiin-ji temple. The family temple where Jirocho himself rests, alongside lieutenants Omasa and Komasa [[4]](https://jirocho.com/shiseki.html).
The birth house and Suehiro sit close together, so they pair naturally with lunch at the Kashi no Ichi fish market and a stroll through the Shimizu Ginza arcades for a half-day port-town history walk.
Read Next
- Shimizu Minato Matsuri: The Port Festival Guide — the port’s birthday party, Jirocho procession included
- The History of Kappore — part one of our Shimizu Port Stories: the dance that took 1,000 years to come home
- 20 Things to Do in Shimizu — the full menu for a port day, Jirocho sites included
- Shimizu Ginza Shopping Streets — today’s life on the old Tokaido road Jirocho once walked
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How much of the Jirocho legend is true?
The tales of his lieutenants — especially the beloved Mori no Ishimatsu stories — are heavily embellished by professional storytellers and film. Enjoy them as fiction. The Kanrin Maru burials, the Fuji farmland project, and the English school, however, are documented history. The factual half of his life is already a movie.
Q: Where should I start the walking trail?
From the port side, start at Jirocho Street with the birth house and Suehiro — 20 to 30 minutes each, about an hour together. If your call falls on a Tuesday, the birth house is closed; build the walk around Suehiro and the Soshi-bo tomb instead.
Q: Are the exhibits in English?
Mostly Japanese, at both houses. A translation app covers the essentials, and reading this article first gives you the story the displays assume you know.
Sources and References
Numbers in brackets [ ] in the text refer to the sources below.
- Shimizu Jirocho — Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures, National Diet Library (Japanese)
- Shimizu Jirocho — Wikipedia (Japanese)
- Portrait of an Extraordinary Shizuokan: Shimizu Jirocho — Jirocho Society (Japanese)
- Guide to Jirocho Historic Sites — Jirocho Society (Japanese)
- Jirocho’s Contributions to Local Development — Shimizu Area Local History (Japanese)
- Jirocho Birth House, Registered Cultural Property — City of Shizuoka (Japanese)
- Jirocho Birth House — Shizuoka City Tourism Navi (Japanese)
- Funayado Suehiro Memorial House — Shizuoka City Tourism Navi (Japanese)
*Last updated: August 2026. Jirocho’s life is thickly layered with storytellers’ embellishments; this article sticks to the best-documented accounts. Opening hours and closing days of the historic sites can change — confirm locally before visiting.*