Goshiki-numa
Interesting facts
- Bishamon-numa, the largest pond, lies at about 770 metres, measures some 2.8 kilometres around and is up to 13 metres deep.
- Bishamon-numa's blue-green tint comes from mildly acidic water, around pH 5, carrying vast numbers of tiny aluminium silicate particles that scatter light.
- Being less acidic than its neighbours, Bishamon-numa supports plankton, water milfoil and pondweed, as well as fish such as dace and minnows.
- Bishamon-numa takes its name from Bishamonten, a Buddhist guardian deity counted among Japan's Seven Lucky Gods.
- Aka-numa, the "Red Pond", is actually greenish; its name comes from iron-rich water that stains the roots of the reeds along its shore red.
- A carp with a red heart-shaped mark on its white flank lives in Bishamon-numa; according to local lore, couples who spot it together will find love.
- The 1888 blast that created the ponds was a steam explosion: no material from fresh magma has been found in its deposits.
- The same debris avalanche drowned the remains of the Hibara gold and silver mines, which had once helped fund the Aizu domain, beneath Lake Hibara.
- The eruption was the first great disaster of modern Meiji Japan, and a monument near the ponds marks the area as the birthplace of peacetime disaster relief in the country.
- Replanting funded largely by private money turned about 70 per cent of the devastated debris field green over some 31 years.
Why it is worth it
On the northern side of Mount Bandai in Fukushima Prefecture, a cluster of small lakes and ponds shows a startling range of colours: emerald, cobalt, milky turquoise, rust-red. Goshiki-numa, the "five-coloured lakes", is the name for some thirty ponds scattered through the woods of the Urabandai plateau in the village of Kitashiobara, within Bandai-Asahi National Park. The colours come from volcanic minerals carried into the water and from water plants and algae, and they shift through the seasons and with the weather.
The lakes are the offspring of a catastrophe. On 15 July 1888 Mount Bandai erupted and the northern peak, Ko-Bandai, collapsed; a vast avalanche of rock and debris buried villages and killed nearly five hundred people. The debris dammed the local rivers and created hundreds of lakes and ponds, among them the large lakes Hibara, Onogawa and Akimoto and, between them, the scattered ponds of Goshiki-numa. The devastated land was slowly reforested, in large part thanks to Endo Genmu, a local man who spent his own fortune planting trees on the debris, and it was his work that first turned the area into a destination.
A nature trail of about four kilometres links the main ponds. It begins at Bishamon-numa, the largest of the group, with Mount Bandai rising across the water, and passes Aka-numa; Midoro-numa; Tatsu-numa; Benten-numa, with its patterns of underwater plants; the cobalt-blue Ruri-numa; Ao-numa; and the crystal-clear Yanagi-numa, before ending near Lake Hibara.
Getting there
The lakes are on the Urabandai plateau in Kitashiobara, about 21 km from Aizu-Wakamatsu in a straight line. Buses run to the trailheads from Inawashiro Station on the JR Ban'etsu West Line, a ride of about 25 minutes, and from Kitakata Station. Fukushima Airport (FKS) is about 56 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Goshiki-numa (五色沼), is a cluster of five volcanic lakes situated at the foot of Mount Bandai in the center of the lake district of the Bandai Highland, Kitashiobara, Fukushima, Japan.
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