Kamikōchi
Interesting facts
- The name was first written with characters meaning 'divine enclosure': by tradition the god of Hotaka Shrine descended on Mount Hotaka and is worshipped by Myōjin Pond.
- The flat valley floor is thought to be an old lake bed, formed when an eruption of the Yake volcanoes dammed the Azusa, which once flowed toward Gifu.
- In 1828 the Buddhist monk Banryū climbed Yarigatake and placed a Buddhist image on its summit.
- Kappa-bashi began as a log drawbridge and was replaced by a suspension bridge in 1910.
- In 1927 Kamikōchi was chosen as the valley entry among the Eight Views of Japan, ahead of the Tenryū Gorge.
- The original Kama Tunnel into the valley, opened in 1924, was dug by hand.
- The Imperial Hotel opened a mountain hotel in Kamikōchi in 1933.
- The valley's Japanese macaques live through winters harsher than those faced by the famous northernmost monkeys of the Shimokita Peninsula.
- Native char once dominated the Azusa, but after brook and brown trout were stocked from 1925, hybrids spread and the char lost its dominance.
- In the small Furuike pond, spring water rises from the bottom together with air, forming rings on the surface without pause.
Why it is worth it
Kamikōchi is a high valley in the Hida Mountains, the Northern Alps of Japan, where the clear Azusa River runs over a broad gravel bed beneath walls of rock and snow. The valley is about 18 km long, its floor lying between roughly 1,400 and 1,600 metres, while the surrounding peaks reach 3,190 metres. Mount Hotaka closes the northern end and the active volcano Mount Yake the southern one. The Azusa is the headwater of the Shinano, Japan's longest river, and at the foot of Yake it fills Lake Taishō, created when an eruption in 1915 dammed the valley.
Because the valley floor is so level, it holds marshes and ponds such as the Takezawa Marsh, Tashiro Pond and Myōjin Pond, fed by snowmelt and springs that stay cold even in midsummer. Larch forests line the river, and in October the larches turn gold against the first snow on the peaks. Japanese macaques forage along the banks. The centre of the valley is marked by Kappa-bashi, a narrow wooden suspension bridge with a view straight up to the Hotaka range; it appears in Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's 1927 novel Kappa, which set off a wave of domestic interest in the valley. Kamikōchi lies within Chūbu-Sangaku National Park and is designated both a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and a Special Natural Monument.
The valley was heavily logged until the mid-19th century and later used for grazing; horses and cattle were kept at Tokusawa until 1934. Its reputation as a mountain landscape owes much to Walter Weston, a British missionary whose writings popularised recreational mountaineering in Japan and who argued for the area's protection; a festival in his honour is held each June. Today Kamikōchi is the main gateway to the climbs on Yarigatake and Okuhotaka, with mountain huts spread along the trails.
Getting there
Kamikōchi lies within the city of Matsumoto, about 30 km in a straight line from the city centre; Azumino is about 23 km away. From Matsumoto Station the Kamikōchi Line runs to Shin-Shimashima, where buses continue into the valley, a trip of just under two hours. Private cars are not allowed beyond the Kama Tunnel; drivers leave them at Sawando or Hirayu. The nearest airport is Shinshu-Matsumoto Airport (MMJ), about 28 km away.
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From the encyclopaedia
Kamikōchi is a remote mountainous highland valley within the Hida Mountains range, in the western region of Nagano Prefecture, Japan.
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