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Daisetsuzan NP, Hokkaido
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Akaiwa-no-taki gets its name from a natural rust-red stain: Furano’s mountaineering guide explains that iron-bearing, acidic water in the stream colors the riverbed and rocks reddish brown.
A marker commemorates explorer Matsuura Takeshirō’s 1858 crossing of Genshigahara on his journey from Biei toward Tokachi. Furano City’s monument record says the route appears in his journal: this bog was once a mountain corridor.
A 2016 park-ranger report noted there were no boardwalks or viewing decks here—visitors walked through the bog itself. When trampling began opening bare patches and parallel tracks, local volunteers started using coconut-fiber nets to help plants recover.
Park rangers have noted a lovely botanical trio in Genshigahara: cotton grass with fluffy seed heads, the orchid toki-so, and hime-shakunage, or bog rosemary. Cuckoo calls carry from the surrounding spruce forest.
Japan’s Environment Ministry lists Genshigahara as Important Wetland No. 49, a typical subarctic high moor. In this kind of bog, peat can build up into a raised dome sustained mainly by rainwater rather than streams.
At Kinshi-no-taki—“Silk-Thread Falls”—a tributary fans into fine, threadlike streams as it drops over the rock. It is one of 7 representative waterfalls shown on the local Genshigahara trail map.
