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The story
Hello! Project idol Ruri Hiromoto, speaking fondly at a talk show during “Hiro Fes 2026” held in her hometown of Hiroshima about returning home after a long absence, sparked a debate on the 5channel Hello! Project discussion board over “which is the real river — Tokyo’s rivers or Hiroshima’s Ota River.” In the thread, some pushed back by naming Tokyo rivers like the Sumida, Tama, and Arakawa (“those are proper rivers too!”), while others defended Hiroshima by pointing to how the Ota River system branches like a web through the city center. Before long it had turned into a casual debate over what actually makes a river feel like a “real” river.
What people said
Hiromoto: I felt all sorts of things, coming back to Hiroshima after so long and getting to do an event here in Hiroshima
Hiroshima's city center is just packed with rivers
"One's hometown is best thought of from afar" (a famous line by poet Ishikawa Takuboku)
Saga, though… (his/her actual hometown — implying it can't compete)
Nakayama: "Only Tokyo wins, lololol"
meanwhile her castmate Marin Fukuda pushed her hometown hard and landed a promotional gig for Hasami ware (a pottery style)
Hiromoto → from Hiroshima
Nishizaki → from neighboring Okayama
Kitahara → actually born in Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture
Hiroshima's rivers are dirtier, if anything
pretty much just the Tama, Arakawa, Nakagawa, and Edogawa
says she wants to see a real river.
Startled, I look at the river.
There amid the young cherry leaves
is the inseparable,
familiar old filthy Sumida River.
The blur of the hazy horizon
is the pale-pink dampness of morning.
Ruri, gazing into the distance, says
that the Ota River flowing
through the city of Hiroshima every day
is Ruri's real river.
It's an artless little story about a river.
(A parody of Takamura Kōtarō's famous poem "Chieko-shō," in which Chieko longs for the real sky of her hometown instead of Tokyo's.)
The real-life woman behind Chieko-shō actually had a mental breakdown living in Tokyo… and wanted to go home to see the "real sky"
・Arakawa
・Tama River
・Edogawa
Those three have a lot of greenery too, so even though it's Tokyo you get black kites flying overhead, plus raccoon dogs and otters. Going out to those rivers actually feels like seeing a real river
I was born and raised in central Tokyo, but the one near me feels more like a moat than a river
the Arakawa and Tama are too huge, and the rest feel like drainage ditches
So too big is no good either?
Ah, that — well, people outside Hiroshima are surprised it even has a tidal ebb and flow
there are actually quite a few people on Ookami (the Hello! Project fan board) who can instantly connect it to Chieko-shō — impressive
I'm from the generation that had Chieko-shō in our school textbooks
wonder if it's still in there these days
That's because the Arakawa has a massive reservoir called Lake Saiko backing it up
Hiroshima's Ota River
Tama River
Arakawa
Edogawa
Nakagawa
Were you in school before 1968 (Showa 43)?
Hiroshima's rivers are packed densely into that narrow plain, so walking through the city you're bound to run into one
in Hiroshima a river is just always part of daily life
Tokyo is so much bigger than Hiroshima that you don't get to see a river as often day-to-day
Still, Hiroshima's about as big as Tokyo's 23 wards
Nice
the islands of the Seto Inland Sea
water flows down into the Ota River from a huge mountain in Shimane
it's just that right at the very end, downstream, it splits into 7
well, 6 now
Right
it only splits at the very last stretch
Sumida River, Arakawa, Edogawa
Apparently the Sumida River doesn't count
Background and Key Points of the Debate
The Ota River rises in the Chugoku Mountains and forms a delta just before reaching central Hiroshima, historically splitting into 7 channels — now 6, after one was filled in — before emptying into the Seto Inland Sea. The sheer density of these branches, so thick that you run into one wherever you walk in the city, is the source of Hiroshima’s reputation as a “city of rivers.” The Sumida and Meguro Rivers, meanwhile, are tidal rivers that ultimately connect to the genuine, officially designated Arakawa and Tama river systems, but decades of urbanization and concrete embankments have left them with more of a “drainage ditch” image. What split the thread was where to draw the line on what counts as a “real” river: the Hiroshima side pointed to density and closeness to daily life, while the Tokyo side cited the sheer scale of the Arakawa and Tama. Several posts also noted — as a fact that surprises people outside Hiroshima — that the mouth of the Ota River is tidal, with a genuine ebb and flow.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Hello! Project board) thread “[Sad News] Ruri Hiromoto: “Tokyo has no rivers,” “Neither the Meguro River nor the Sumida River are real rivers — the Ota River flowing through Hiroshima is the real river”.”
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