Tsumago

Tsumago-juku was the forty-second of the sixty-nine stations on the Nakasendo, the inland highway that the Tokugawa shogunate organised in the early 17th century to link Kyoto with Edo; before that it was the tenth of the eleven stations of the Kisoji, the older trade route through this valley. The town held official inns and stables, and it lodged the processions of daimyo travelling under the alternate attendance system, as well as couriers, pilgrims and pack-horse trains. The Kiso valley itself belonged to the Owari branch of the Tokugawa, who controlled felling in its cypress forests strictly.

Above the town stood Tsumago Castle, a hill fortress of the Kiso clan, which saw a large battle in 1584 during the campaigns that followed Oda Nobunaga's death and was dismantled in the early 17th century under the rule of one castle to a province. The town's fortunes turned in the modern era. The Chuo railway line, built through the valley in the Meiji era, ran past Tsumago rather than through it, the new national road did the same, and by the mid-20th century the houses were emptying and falling in.

In the 1960s residents chose to restore rather than replace. The work began in 1968, and by 1971 some twenty houses had been repaired and the community had agreed a charter that no place in Tsumago would be sold, hired out or destroyed. In 1976 the government designated the town a national architectural preservation site, a model that other historic towns later followed.

The character of the place comes from that charter. Power and telephone lines are buried, vending machines and modern shopfronts are screened or kept off the street, and cars are excluded during the day, so the town is unusually quiet for a Japanese sight of its fame. The houses are lived in, and the shops are run by the families who own them, which gives the street a working rhythm: shutters opening in the morning, goods set out under the eaves, everything closing by dusk.

Wood is the local craft. Kiso cypress, hinoki, was the shogunate's timber, and the valley still makes bent-wood boxes, lacquered bowls, combs and cooking utensils, sold from small workshops along the road.

Walking is the other tradition. The route to Magome has become one of the best-known short hikes in Japan among foreign visitors, and the inns here were early in dealing with guests who speak little Japanese. Staying in a minshuku brings its own etiquette — slippers changed at the threshold, a shared bath taken by washing first and soaking afterwards, dinner and breakfast at set times — and the hosts are used to explaining it.

Tsumago is a small part of Nagiso, a town of about 4,000 people that has been losing residents for decades; the preserved street itself houses only a few hundred. The population is old, the primary schools are small, and many younger people work or study in Nakatsugawa, Nagoya or further afield.

Tourism carries the local economy. Households run inns, tea houses and craft shops, the museums are staffed by the town, and coaches from Nagoya and Matsumoto arrive through the middle of the day before the street empties again. Forestry remains important in the wider valley, with cypress, pine and larch on the slopes, and there is a little farming on the flat ground by the Kiso River, along with construction and public works.

The day here is short and early. Shops open around the middle of the morning and shut in the late afternoon; guests arrive at the inns before dark, eat at a fixed hour and are out on the path soon after breakfast. Winter is quiet, with snow shovelled off the street and many businesses closing for part of the season.

The long-term concerns are the ones common to rural Japan: an ageing population, empty houses that are expensive to maintain in timber and plaster, and finding successors for the inns and workshops. Set against that, the valley has gained from steady foreign interest in walking the old road, which spreads visitors along the route rather than concentrating them in one place.

The valley eats mountain food. Gohei mochi is the emblem: rice pounded until it is half smooth, pressed onto a flat wooden skewer, painted with a sweet-salty sauce, often of miso with crushed walnuts or sesame, and grilled until it chars slightly. It is sold from charcoal grills on the street and eaten standing up.

Buckwheat grows well in cool highland soil, so soba is the everyday meal — served cold on a slatted tray with a dipping broth, or hot with mountain vegetables. Those vegetables, sansai, are a valley speciality in spring: bracken shoots, butterbur, wild aralia and bamboo shoots, blanched or fried as tempura. River fish appear at inn dinners, particularly iwana, a char, skewered whole and salt-grilled over embers.

Preserving is a Kiso tradition born of long winters. Sunki-zuke, red turnip leaves fermented without any salt, is sour and slightly fizzy and is eaten as a pickle or stirred into hot noodles; miso, dried mushrooms and pickled vegetables fill out the table. Hoba miso, miso grilled on a dried magnolia leaf, is common across the mountain districts nearby.

Sweets lean on the chestnut harvest: kuri kinton, steamed chestnut pressed with a little sugar into a twisted shape, appears in autumn, alongside chestnut rice. Local sake is brewed in the valley from mountain water, and cups of roasted tea are poured freely in the tea houses along the street.