Hiruzen Highlands was added to Your Favorites!
Daisen-Oki NP, Okayama
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
A 1950s home-cooking trend became Hiruzen yakisoba: families made miso sauce for jingisukan, and Masuya diner paired its sauce with mature chicken and cabbage. The local promotion group won B-1 Grand Prix gold in 2011.
Hiruzen has Japan’s largest local herd of Jersey cattle, with about 2,000 animals. Their fresh milk can look faintly golden: beta-carotene in the grass they eat gives it its tint and the nickname “golden milk.”
Hiruzen okowa is a celebration staple: glutinous rice is steamed with chicken, chestnuts, burdock, carrots, konjac, adzuki beans and seasonal mountain greens. This distinctive local mixed rice took shape in the 1950s.
Hiruzen Highlands was once a lake. Volcanic eruptions dammed a river about 350,000 years ago, creating Ancient Hiruzenbara Lake; its water eventually drained south, and the lakebed became today’s highland around 15,000 years ago.
In August, Hiruzen’s Omiya Odori circles beneath a lantern hung with intricate cut-paper decorations called shiri-ge, as communities host the dance in turn. It is nationally designated and was included in UNESCO’s Furyu-odori inscription in 2022.
Omiya Odori ends with “Tenko,” a parade of disguised performers: one carries a half cucumber, another mimes loach-fishing, while mortar-and-pestle characters perform a fertility-themed dance.
A metallic blue-green endangered longhorn beetle lives in Hiruzen’s grassland and depends on yuusuge: adults feed and lay eggs on the plant, and larvae develop inside its stems. Local teams maintain and restore its habitat.
At Shio-gama Spring, a small pond at Mount Naka Hiruzen’s foot, water wells up at about 300 liters per second and stays at 11°C year-round. Its flow helps supply local fields and the Asahi River.
Hiruzen’s grasslands were once a village resource: people cut grass for cattle, roof thatch, fertilizer and snow fences, then gathered for spring burns. The open scenery is a working landscape shaped by generations of local care.
Hiruzen craftspeople once made snow footwear from cattail woven with cord from linden bark. The plant’s natural water resistance suited the snowy highland; the same traditional craft is now also made into baskets and other household goods.
At its peak in the Edo period, Hiruzen reportedly produced about 400,000 pieces of Gohara lacquerware a year. Everyday bowls and dishes traveled along the Daisen Road toward Matsue and Izumo; the craft later fell silent and was revived in the 1980s.
Gohara lacquerware starts with chestnut cut crosswise into disks, not lengthwise boards. That yields fewer pieces from each tree but preserves the wood’s striking concentric rings, which the craft’s finish is designed to show.
Cold weather is part of Hiruzen’s daikon story: growers let a special autumn crop face the chill, which boosts its sweetness. The “kodawari daikon” is shipped for just 1 month, in November.
Miki-ga-hara got its name after Okayama Governor Miki camped there overnight in 1955 during a dairy-farming visit. Locals proposed the peaceful new name for this former army training ground, replacing names tied to military leaders.
Local lore places Takamagahara, the gods’ heavenly realm, in Hiruzen, pointing to names such as Toyosaka, Orochi and Notto, and a nearby rock called Amanoiwato. Maniwa’s tourism source clearly presents this as myth, not established history.
