北信越を巡るTraveling the Hokushinetsu Region

I have been traveling around the Hokushinetsu region for the past ten days. Hokushinetsu refers to the vast area consisting of the three Hokuriku prefectures of Toyama, Ishikawa, and Fukui, along with Nagano and Niigata from the Shin’etsu area, but today it is rarely noted for anything other than its natural environment.

In the present day, the Pacific side of Japan is filled with major cities and economic zones, and is thus often seen as the “front side,” but since ancient times the Sea of Japan side centered on Hokushinetsu had served this role. I have personally visited the Sea of Japan side many times to conduct research in order to better understand this ancient reality, and while it cannot be said to be absolute, I feel this argument captures one aspect of history.

So then, where exactly does the “northern limit” of Hokushinetsu lie? This becomes very important when considering the Tohoku region further to the north, but what I found particularly interesting on my recent trip was the character of Murakami in Niigata Prefecture as a cultural northern limit.

In other words, it seems that the cultural zones of Hokushinetsu and Tohoku are largely split at the northernmost point of Niigata, Murakami. Murakami functions like an invisible boundary, and I believe it is extremely important for understanding the routes and limits of cultural transmission in Japan. Even within representative aspects of Japanese culture, there are examples of traditions with Murakami as a boundary, one of which may surprise you: tea.

Tea, long dominated in production by Shizuoka, which has recently begun to decline as Kagoshima rises in prominence, is widely known as a culture with origins in Kyushu and western Japan. More precisely, it is generally said that the basis of tea culture in Kyushu was brought by monks who engaged in exchanges with China, and that it was cultivated over long periods of time. The Zen monk Eisai had a particularly strong influence, but it is certain that prototypes of tea culture existed even earlier.

Fundamentally, tea culture was refined in the Kansai region, in places such as Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara, and from there spread eastward along the Pacific side through Shizuoka, Kamakura, and Edo. Yet very few people know that tea cultivation exists in the northern parts of the Sea of Japan side of eastern Japan. Murakami is in fact the northernmost production area of tea, and cultivation continues there even today, with what seems to be a sensibility distinct from that of the west.

So why is there no image of tea cultivation on the Sea of Japan side? It is because the preconception that most Japanese hold of the Sea of Japan side is one of darkness and gloom. But this is merely a prejudice limited to winter. In reality, if you visit the Sea of Japan side, you will see that in September, as autumn approaches, the sea is calm, vividly blue, and beautifully serene, with very pleasant winds. On the other hand, there are long winters, and in some regions heavy snow. Yet how, under such harsh climates unlike Kyushu or Shizuoka, is tea cultivated in Murakami?

When I asked people involved with tea in detail, I learned that Murakami’s tea fields are not located deep in the mountain valleys, but actually along the slopes of mountains facing the Sea of Japan. The reason is the strong northwesterly winds that blow from the Sea of Japan. Because these strong winter winds prevent heavy snow from accumulating, a surprisingly suitable environment for tea cultivation is formed. This is an accumulation of old wisdom that avoided the conditions of heavy snow that cling to the Sea of Japan side, and is deeply fascinating.

When actually drinking Murakami tea, one finds a strong depth and sweetness unlike the tea grown in the warm climates of Kyushu or Shizuoka. The tea nurtured by Murakami’s unique climate, and the tea culture of this region overall, offer much to learn for understanding Japan’s plural cultural forms. Considering especially that Murakami has borne the role of this cultural “northern limit” (kekkai), it becomes clear that while certain cultural spheres spread along the Sea of Japan up to this point, they rarely extended further north. It seems as if an invisible boundary exists here, and historically it was positioned as a great obstacle to northward movement.

In fact, on this trip I traveled around places such as the Noto Peninsula, mountain villages in Nagano, southern and northern Niigata, and the Aizu-Wakamatsu mountain region in Fukushima bordering Niigata, and in the deities worshipped at shrines and in the ancient local traditions I could see how, since long ago, this area was the greatest barrier for tribes moving northward. Most tribes lacked the strength to cross Hokushinetsu. The Kami who crossed this boundary was Okuninushi, the enshrined deity of Izumo Taisha, and from the perspectives of myth, tradition, and enshrined deities, this is crucial for understanding the reality of ancient Japan.

Indeed, for example, along the Hokushinetsu coast there are countless traditions of visits by this Izumo deity, and the princess whom the Izumo kami married was Nunakawahime of Itoigawa in Niigata. Their child became Takeminakata, the deity of Suwa Taisha further inland from Itoigawa. These myths suggest the true realities of ancient times in many places.

And flowing through this northern Sea of Japan area is the Miomote River. The area around Murakami including the Miomote River is geographically and historically fascinating. This is because Murakami has long had a unique culture of venerating the salmon that ascend the Miomote River as Kami while building its way of life around them, and this is a culture wonderfully preserved to the present day. Living by venerating the salmon of the Miomote and integrating them into all aspects of life is the essence of Murakami culture, and its origins go back to the Jomon period.

What must especially be noted is that in this place salmon are Kami, and no part is wasted. An entirely unique culture has long been built in which every part is used, resulting in the creation of more than one hundred different salmon dishes from a single fish, with Murakami consistently ranking first in Japan for salmon consumption per person. This is not simply washoku, but effectively Murakami’s own folk heritage. Through the lens of this “salmon culture” one can see part of the essence of Japanese culture itself, and it is moving to see even today how the people, with deep knowledge of their natural environment, venerate the deities of wind, water, and fire above all. Most of all, the people are wonderful. Murakami’s people continue to convey, through salmon, that Japanese culture once had its essence here, preserving qualities of temperament, carefulness in life, and faith that have disappeared elsewhere.

Furthermore, Jomon sites have been discovered along the Miomote River basin, and by the Heian period salmon from the Miomote were even presented to Kyoto aristocrats, showing that this land has long been important as a living sphere. But in fact, the reason Murakami could preserve this rare unique culture into the modern day involved the efforts of one low-ranking samurai of the Edo period: Aoto Buheiji.

For centuries, salmon had been the most important life resource in Murakami, and this was the same in the Edo period when Murakami was a domain. But as overfishing drove salmon to the brink of depletion, by 1720 catches had nearly collapsed to zero, plunging the domain into crisis. While officials of the domain faltered helplessly, Aoto Buheiji, born in 1713 as a low-ranking samurai of Murakami, rose up for his homeland. He spent years alone observing salmon ascending the Miomote, and became the first in the world to discover their homing instinct of returning to the river where they were born. Using this, Aoto proposed dividing the Miomote into three channels, designating one as a “seed river” for salmon spawning, prohibiting capture there, while allowing normal capture in the main flow—an ecosystem making use of the salmon’s homing instinct. In effect, the world’s first natural salmon hatchery system was created by Aoto.

However, this was the Edo period, and regardless of how brilliant the idea, absolute obedience to superiors was required. For a low-ranking samurai to propose such an ecosystem to higher-ranking samurai or the lord was forbidden, as it could be taken as criticism of superiors, and so proposals from below were literally matters of life and death. The details are unclear, but he must have faced fierce opposition and harassment, yet he persevered, struggling alone for the future of Murakami’s people. Finally in 1763, at age fifty, an official domain edict put his ecosystem plan into effect. Though the project took some thirty years and was completed in 1794 after his death in 1788, his efforts bore fruit.

Because of Aoto’s system, salmon catches in Murakami increased three to five times, and the protection of salmon as a cultural and historical resource became a reality. In later famines that frequently devastated villages along the Sea of Japan during the Edo period, this measure saved the domain, because while famine meant agricultural ruin and mass starvation, Murakami still had salmon secured through Aoto’s system, and its people were not left without food. This is the background to how over one hundred salmon dishes came to be created, and at the same time how salmon, which saved the people and the domain, came to be venerated as Kami.

Time moved on to the modern age, and a trial equal to Aoto’s era came upon Murakami’s culture and salmon. This was faced by Yoshikawa Shinji, head of Kikkawa, a salmon enterprise. Though Yoshikawa initially left for Tokyo to pursue a career instead of inheriting the family business, he eventually resolved to return home and join Kikkawa. At that time, as nationwide road-widening projects began erasing culture even in castle town Murakami, development plans also threatened the very street where Kikkawa was located. Residents were paid to move out, and Murakami culture was on the brink of extinction.

At this point, Yoshikawa happened to meet the chairman of the National Federation for the Preservation of Historic Townscapes while exhibiting at a Takashimaya event in Shinjuku. Hearing the words, “There is no shopping street that became better after being widened. Stop it before your town is destroyed,” he awoke, resolved to dedicate himself to protecting Murakami from development. The chairman’s conviction, “There are towns that succeeded by preserving history, but none by destroying it,” is something I strongly agree with, having traveled across Japan myself. But postwar Japan was a nation entangled in the interests of construction companies, the LDP, and mass media, and overturning an already-decided plan to save a town was no easy matter. Yet the genes of Murakami’s people inherited from Aoto revived through Yoshikawa’s strong persuasion, and remarkably, the development plan was canceled and the town was saved. The stress of this must have been immense, and he must have faced bitter opposition even from locals, likely much as Aoto did.

In this critical era, one man stood up, grasped the essence of Murakami culture, preserved what must be preserved, and changed what must be changed, resulting in the Murakami we see today. In truth, Murakami is not a town that draws huge tourist crowds and is relatively unknown, but despite being at Niigata’s northern edge, the energy of this land that preserved and inherited its cultural capital is remarkable, and its people are wonderful. This is a quality rarely found in Japan today.

Thus Yoshikawa, while focusing on salmon, also turned his attention to the “northern limit of tea culture” long inherited as part of Murakami culture. Where was the greatness of former Japanese culture, and the greatness of the Japanese people? Today, there are only a handful of places left in all of Japan where this can be understood, and Murakami is without doubt one of them.