This paper aims to clarify the realities of applications for water rights from hydropower generation in the Kinu River in the Meiji Era, when Japan’s power generation industry began. Through analyses of related documents, including confidential background papers, it also examines how the Tochigi prefectural government handled the applications. The documents reveal that: 1) different people rushed to file applications just to make sales, 2) the prefectural government’s engineers were devoted to avoiding conflicts with existing local irrigation projects at cost to the company, and 3) the accepted rights were later sold to another company to be used on a different project.