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Akan-Mashū NP, Hokkaido
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
A marimo-inspired sweet comes with a tiny surprise: Hokkai Marimo Seika wraps green yokan in a thin casing, then you prick it with a toothpick to release the jelly.
A marimo ball isn’t one plant: countless threadlike algae tangle together to make it. Waves roll the ball across the lakebed, helping light reach all sides for photosynthesis.
Marimo grow in lakes elsewhere, too, but large colonies of strikingly round marimo are found only in Lake Akan. The lake’s combination of conditions makes these green spheres possible.
The familiar tale that tragic Ainu lovers became marimo is not an ancient Ainu legend. Research traces it to stories created by non-Ainu Japanese writers in the 1920s.
Himemasu, a landlocked form of sockeye salmon, is native to Lake Akan and prized as food. In July, the Ainu Kapatcep Nomi ceremony gives thanks for the fish and the lake’s natural blessings.
The Marimo Festival began in 1950 to protect marimo threatened by theft and falling lake levels. Ainu prayers, torch processions and a canoe ceremony to return marimo to the lake keep its conservation purpose visible.
A 2025 study of lake-bottom DNA estimated that marimo were 10–100 times more abundant before the 20th century than today. It linked their early decline to muddy runoff and water-level changes.
When explorer Matsuura Takeshirō reached Lake Akan in 1858, Ainu people were already using its hot springs. He bathed there and wrote that the water seemed to wash away even years of fatigue.
In 2019, 11 of the Maeda Ippoen Foundation’s 13 wells supplied about 3,000 liters of hot spring water per minute to roughly 70 hotels, public facilities and homes. Direct pipes keep it from meeting air.
Akanko’s present-day Ainu Kotan took shape in 1959, when Mitsuko Maeda provided land without charge and Ainu residents living around the resort gathered there. Today, about 120 Ainu people live in the community.
The local Ainu craft center is nicknamed Harikiki, meaning “work hard” or “make an effort.” Its training rooms let visitors see textile and embroidery work, as well as woodcarving, in progress.
At the kotan, artist Kiyoshi Hikawa makes tsumushi-bori: several wooden motifs carved from a single piece and linked like a ring. The local craft site describes the work as a popular draw for visitors.
Ainu yukar stories were traditionally passed on by voice, often recited to distinctive melodies. At Akanko Ainu Kotan, heroic tales are reimagined as Yukara plays.
Near the bokke mud volcano, geothermal warmth keeps a patch of ground snow-free. The crickets living there sing year-round and can breed twice a year, unlike the usual one generation in Hokkaido.
In the Meiji era, the lakeshore had just one inn, serving loggers and a few climbers. After the Akan crossing road opened in 1930 and the area became a national park in 1934, more inns and hotels followed.
