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Towada-Hachimantai NP, Aomori
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In 1894, a fishway let salmonids pass Choshi Otaki into Lake Towada. A later fisheries paper says it was closed after cherry salmon were blamed for eating young kokanee.
Known as “Fish-Stop Falls,” Choshi Otaki blocks fish trying to swim up the Oirase into Lake Towada. Researchers infer the lake likely had no fish before people began stocking it.
After 21 years of attempts to stock Towada, Wainai Sadayuki’s kokanee returned to spawn in 1905. His wife Katsu reportedly pawned her kimono, comb, and watch to help buy the eggs; himemasu is now a local delicacy.
At just 7 m high but 20 m wide, Choshi Otaki is more a broad wall than a towering plunge—and it is the only waterfall on the Oirase River’s main channel.
The kokanee introduced to Towada already had an Ainu name: kapatchep (カパッチェㇷ゚), “thin fish,” referring to its flatter body. “Himemasu” was coined as its Japanese name in 1908.
Towada’s kokanee fishery runs on a yearly homecoming: adults return to the hatchery each autumn, where fishers collect eggs, raise fry, and release the next generation into the lake the following summer.
An early-20th-century postcard in Aomori’s archive labels Choshi Otaki “Nenokuchi Falls.” Older texts also call it “Choshi-no-kuchi Falls,” as names for the cascade and nearby lake outlet shifted over time.
Beside Choshi Otaki is a poem monument to Sato Haruo, erected on October 21, 1953. Its melancholy verse looks past the rushing cascade to the water’s muddier fate farther downstream.
