Finding New Faces in an Old Japanese Favorite: Hiking the Kiso Valley

Whenever my wife tells me to go take a hike I happily oblige. She said it again last Friday at dinner and by daybreak I was on a train heading into central Japan's Kiso Valley.

The Magome-Tsumago stretch of the old Nakasendo trade route is a well-known and well-trodden trail - and for good reason. Magome and Tsumago are two of the best-preserved Edo Era trade route towns in all of Japan, and are connected by a pleasant (albeit hilly) 7-kilometer walk that takes you through forests and fields and rustic villages that can - and have been - settings for numerous novels and films about the Japan of yesteryear.

Magome is almost too pretty.

The sloping "ishidatami" part of the trail between Magome and Tsumago.

Beautiful and shaded in summer, beautiful and treacherous in winter.

Tsumago is less glazed (read: more authentic-looking) than Magome.

I'd walked this section of the Nakasendo several times, as a guide and on my own. But I'd never gone in winter. And I'd never ventured south of Magome or north of Tsumago. The original Nakasendo, the mountainous route between Kyoto and Edo, covered more than 500 kilometers. Tsumago and Magome were just two of 69 post towns where merchants, travelers, and nobility on their way to see the shogun would eat and sleep and trade.

I've no mind to walk the entire route. (I'd cycle it if not for all the stairs.) But I did want to see more of it. In short, that's how I ended up here:

The morning had warmed noticeably since we pulled out of Matsumoto. Good thing considering how I was dressed. The few people on the train, conductor included, likely thought I'd made a mistake by getting off here. Most round-eyes go to Nakatsugawa and take the bus to Magome.

For better or for worse, I've often been told I'm not like most round-eyes.

Ochiai Calling

I like the feeling of being in a new place. Of not knowing what I'll find, even if the initial view looks like the opening shot of a third-rate indie film. The name Ochiai is made up of the characters 落 ("fall" or "drop") and 合 ("meet" or "match"). It would be easy enough to fabricate some degree of auspiciousness in this but instead I just started walking along the river, hoping I wouldn't fall in and match my head to the rocks.

Ochiai is the kind of place where even the new parts are old. It's a persistent theme in Japan, and not only out in the sticks. I think it's a mix of a lack of natural resources and, in line with the Japanese spirit of never changing, a reflection of the paucity of everyday life post-WWII.

But with that ingrained desire to cling to things of the past come pockets of the Japan I will never tire of.

The walk to the old post town of Ochiai-juku led past a cement factory, down a weed-eaten roadside hemmed in by a chain link fence, and across an iron footbridge stretched high above the traffic rumbling and roaring through the center of a crowded, nondescript town. The sidewalks were oddly deserted.

The world grew quiet as the traffic and town fell away behind me. Along a side street homes sat mostly silent and noticeably unlit in the gray of the morning. Painted wooden signs pointed me toward Ochiai-juku in 200-meter increments. A brief and playful moment with someone's golden retriever was my only interaction with anything living.

Until I met Iguchi-san.

He seemed shocked to see me standing there outside Zensho-ji Temple where he was the fuku-jushoku, the second in priestly command.  Injecting an occasional English word or two into his gentle Japanese, he invited me into the garden and the glittering main hall of the temple; lit three incense sticks for me to offer in prayer to Buddha; answered my simple questions, giving me his simple views on living well; gladly let me take a selfie with him.

He glanced at his watch, checked his smartphone, and handed me his business card. "Please, come visit again!" he implored.

The next day I sat down to send him a quick note of thanks. His email username was the Japanese phrase for "where are all the travelers?"

In & Out of Town

Ochiai-juku retains scattered relics of its Edo Era existence. Stone lanters called joya-to stand conspicuously along the road. Markers indicate where government check points and tea houses once stood. One old wooden building, perhaps a merchant's shop back in the day, now houses an eclectic craft boutique. And then there's this stained wood, white plaster, tile-topped wall with a gate so grand it could only betray the importance of who and what was inside.

This was the honjin, the inn where the nobility of yore would stay before and after their trek to Edo to meet with the shogun. As if someone locked the gate and then lost the key, the large house behind this beautifully preserved wall looks like it was deserted three or four earthquakes ago.

Kofukuji Temple has been standing just off Main Street since 1543.

The street bends sharply at the spot where the control gate at the north end of Ochiai-juku once stood. Across a two-lane road (where, it became clear in the space of two minutes, people generally drive way too fast) a stone pillar marks the former site of the all-important and ominous kosatsu.

The kosatsu was a standard fixture at the entryways of these Edo Era post towns. Essentially a massive wooden bulletin board, the kosatsu was where the Tokugawa shogunate along with the local daimyo lords posted notices of legal import - what  types of logged wood could and could not be transported, for example - along with the penalties and punishments for disregarding them. Death, for example. Hence the aforementioned control gate.

More than a mere list of laws, the kosatsu was a stark manifestation of the shogunate's power and authority. That this stone marker faintly resembles a phallus could be a subliminal nod to this idea.

Beyond this point the Nakasendo dips down and away from Ochiai, crossing the rocky and shallow Ochiai-gawa River and crawling uphill into the stillness of the countryside.

A stillness that was occasionally broken by a car driving way too fast down the narrow road.

Getting Stoned

For this 20-kilometer traipse through the Kiso Valley I'd packed a couple of tuna fish sandwiches, a couple of extra shirts, and a pair of sneakers should my dogs start barking in my boots. A 20K hike is a walk in the park for some, a fair endeavor for others. It's nothing compared to those who once traveled this road for  hundreds of kilometers, hauling hundreds of pounds of stuff, with their dogs barking in their straw sandals.

It's a hilly 20K too. Some of the hills along the trail were so menacing in those days of dirt roads that it was deemed necessary to haul thousands of stones up from the river, cut and chisel them, and set them evenly in the earth for hundreds of meters at a stretch.

The purpose was strictly practical, allowing people and horses to climb and descend the steepest parts of the Nakasendo without totally wiping out in the mud and snow. The people charged with the task, being Japanese, made it into nothing less than an artistic endeavor.

Some stretches of these ishidatami still exist. Other parts have been restored. The ishidatami on the road to Magome runs for 840 meters, with three parts totalling 70 meters in length sitting just as they did a few hundred years ago.

Over the Hill

Rivers generally don't go over hills. So why is the Nakasendo, which runs up through the Kiso River valley, so hilly? 

In some places the river cuts through terrain that is simply not flat. Where the banks are flat the land lies ever-susceptible to flooding. This was a constantly-recurring problem along the southern Tokaido Route between Kyoto and Edo, making this mountainous route a safer, more passable alternative. Related to this was the need for high and dry land to build these post towns necessary to support those traveling this road.

If only these hills kept today's drivers from screaming along.

At least in this region of the country (I have little knowledge of the Kaido running through other parts of Japan) these passes all seem to have something in common: tea houses. Many do not exist anymore, indicated only by a wooden post and a swath of overgrown grass. Here on Jukkyoku Pass, between Ochiai and Magome, the Shinchaya tea house contains an entire Japanese inn.

Also up here on the pass is a stone marker denoting the boundary line between two Edo Era regions of Japan, Shinano-no-kuni (信濃国, country of deep/strong belief) to the north and Mino-no-kuni (美濃国, country of deep/strong beauty) to the south.

From Jukkyoku Pass down to the post town of Magome it's all peaceful countryside, laced here and there with the Japan I never seem to tire of.

 

The North Side

Complimenting the train line that runs up and down the valley are local buses that connect certain train stations with Tsumago and Magome. It is worth noting, for entertainment if not practical purposes, that the person who makes the bus schedule and the person who makes the train schedule are evidently not on speaking terms.

The hike from Nakatsugawa Station (where the round-eyes usually get off the train) to Magome (where they usually start walking) takes upwards of two hours. Rare is the specimen with the time and desire for that. Ochiaigawa Station (where, you'll remember, this round-eye got off) isn't far from Ochiai-juku but is still an unappetizing option for the Magome-bound hoi polloi. Best to just wander the gift shop next to Nakatsugawa Station and wait for the bus.

The walk from Tsumago north to Nagiso Station, on the other hand, is an easy two miles and change. Take the bus out of Tsumago if your legs have had enough, but if the bus guy and the train guy are still refusing to sit down and hash out their schedules you'll be sitting at Nagiso Station waiting for the next train longer than it would take to hike those two miles.

And trust me when I say that the hike is much more interesting and pleasant than the waiting room at Nagiso.

After all your eyes have feasted on, from Ochiai to Magome to Tsumago, the sights along this final leg of the hike may not exactly jump out at you. But the path up to the hilltop where Tsumago Castle once stood offers one more bamboo forest stroll and a satisfying view of the valley through which you just walked.

But the way I see it, this isn't just one final chance to see the existing relics of history. This one last leg is a chance to walk, for a little while longer, through the "real" Japan that so many people come here looking for.

So if you decide to come check out this neck of the Kiso Valley woods, and you've got some time and some gas in your legs, pack a couple of tuna sandwiches and head for Ochiaigawa Station.

And if you think you might like some company, give me a holler. Chances are good my wife will have just told me to go take another hike.