Chubu: the Japanese Alps & Mount Fuji

Chubu's story is written in its roads and its warlords. Jomon villagers made the elaborate flame-shaped pottery found in Niigata, and the temple of Zenko-ji at Nagano has drawn pilgrims for well over a thousand years. Two highways later crossed the region from Kyoto to Edo: the coastal Tokaido through Shizuoka and the mountain Nakasendo through the Kiso valley.

In the 16th century the region was a battlefield. Takeda Shingen of Kai, today's Yamanashi, and Uesugi Kenshin of Echigo, today's Niigata, fought repeatedly at Kawanakajima near Nagano. The three men who unified Japan all came from what is now Aichi: Oda Nobunaga, who won his name at Okehazama in 1560; Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a foot soldier's son; and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who secured power at Sekigahara in Gifu in 1600 and later retired to Sunpu, today's Shizuoka city. Under the Tokugawa the Maeda lords of Kaga, the richest domain after the shogun's own, made Kanazawa a centre of crafts and learning.

In the modern era Nagano's silk mills fed the export trade, and the Toyoda family's loom works in Aichi became Toyota, founded as a carmaker in the 1930s. Nagano hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics, Mount Fuji was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013, and the Hokuriku Shinkansen reached Kanazawa in 2015. On 1 January 2024 a powerful earthquake struck the Noto peninsula, devastating Wajima and other towns.

Chubu is less a single identity than three: the snowy Hokuriku coast, the mountain provinces of Shinshu and Hida, and the industrial Tokai plain around Nagoya. The Hokuriku is a stronghold of the Jodo Shinshu school of Buddhism, and Eihei-ji in Fukui is a head temple of Soto Zen.

Festivals are among Japan's most spectacular. Takayama's spring and autumn festivals parade ornate floats with mechanical puppets, the Onbashira at Suwa Taisha, held every six years, sends men riding huge logs down slopes, and in Gujo Hachiman townspeople dance through summer nights. Yatsuo in Toyama holds the Owara Kaze no Bon in September, a slow dance to fiddle and song through its streets.

Crafts are central to local pride. Kanazawa produces nearly all of Japan's gold leaf as well as Kutani porcelain, Wajima is famous for lacquerware, Seto and the Mino area of Gifu for ceramics, Echizen for paper, and Sabae in Fukui is one of Japan's main centres of spectacle-frame making. The gassho-zukuri farmhouses of Shirakawa-go, with steep thatch built for heavy snow, housed large families who raised silkworms in the attics.

About 21 million people live in Chubu's nine prefectures. Nagoya, with about 2.3 million, is Japan's fourth-largest city and the hub of the Tokai industrial belt; Niigata, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Kanazawa, Toyama, Gifu and Nagano are the other main cities.

Aichi is Japan's manufacturing heartland, centred on Toyota and its suppliers, with aerospace, machinery and ceramics alongside. Hamamatsu is home to Yamaha, Suzuki and makers of musical instruments, and Toyama has a long history of pharmaceuticals. The countryside grows rice, famously Koshihikari from Niigata, and fruit in the Kofu and Nagano basins, while Shizuoka has long been Japan's largest producer of green tea. Tourism supports the mountain towns, and Hakuba and Nozawa Onsen now draw many foreign skiers.

The Pacific side is prosperous and busy, while the Sea of Japan coast and the mountain villages are ageing and shrinking. Noto's recovery, the planned maglev line from Tokyo to Nagoya and preparation for a Nankai Trough earthquake are current concerns.

Nagoya has its own cuisine, known as Nagoya-meshi and built on dark hatcho miso from Okazaki: miso katsu, pork cutlet in miso sauce; miso nikomi udon, noodles simmered in a clay pot; hitsumabushi, grilled eel on rice eaten three ways; tebasaki, peppery fried chicken wings; and flat kishimen noodles.

The mountains eat soba — Shinshu soba from Nagano is celebrated — along with oyaki, dumplings filled with vegetables, and wasabi grown in the clear streams of Azumino. In the Kiso valley gohei mochi, pounded rice grilled on a skewer with a sweet sauce, is sold at roadside stalls. Hida beef from around Takayama is prized wagyu, often grilled with hoba miso on a dried magnolia leaf. Yamanashi's dish is hoto, thick flat noodles stewed with pumpkin and miso.

The Sea of Japan coast is seafood country: firefly squid and white shrimp from Toyama Bay, masu-zushi, pressed trout sushi from Toyama, snow crab in winter from Fukui and Ishikawa, and Kanazawa's jibuni, a thickened duck stew. Shizuoka supplies green tea, sakura ebi, the tiny pink shrimp of Suruga Bay, and Hamamatsu's eel. Niigata's rice and water make it one of Japan's great sake regions, and Yamanashi grows grapes, including the white Koshu variety, for Japan's best-known wines.

Mount Fuji rises on the Yamanashi–Shizuoka border, climbed in summer from stations on its flanks, and the Fuji Five Lakes — Kawaguchi, Yamanaka, Sai, Shoji and Motosu — frame it from the north. East of Shizuoka lies the Izu peninsula, with the hot-spring towns of Atami and Shuzenji.

Nagano city grew around Zenko-ji, and in the hills beyond, the snow monkeys of Jigokudani bathe in their hot spring. Matsumoto's black castle stands on the plain below the Northern Alps, and Kamikochi, a high valley of larch and river beneath the Hotaka peaks, is the classic entry to them. The Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route crosses the range to Toyama past the Kurobe dam and, in spring, towering walls of snow.

In Gifu, Takayama keeps its dark wooden merchant streets and morning markets, and to the west Shirakawa-go, a UNESCO World Heritage Site shared with Gokayama in Toyama, is a village of thatched farmhouses among rice fields. Kanazawa has Kenroku-en, one of Japan's three great gardens, the Higashi Chaya teahouse district, the Nagamachi samurai lanes and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, with the rugged Noto peninsula to the north.

Nagoya's rebuilt castle carries golden roof ornaments, Atsuta Shrine is among Japan's most revered, and the Toyota Commemorative Museum tells the industrial story; Inuyama nearby has an original castle keep. The Kiso valley links Magome and Tsumago by a walking trail of about eight kilometres along the Nakasendo, with Narai further north. Niigata's Sado Island, once a place of exile, has a former gold mine now on the UNESCO World Heritage list.