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Myōkō-Togakushi Renzan NP, Niigata
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By mid-June, Japanese tree frogs attach white, foamy egg masses to branches over the pond. Red-bellied newts gather beneath them, ready to eat tadpoles as they hatch and tumble into the water.
Imoriike takes its name from the red-bellied newts once abundant here. Their bright undersides explain their Japanese name, and they carry tetrodotoxin from their food—a potent chemical defense.
Around 1975, ornamental water lilies were introduced to Imoriike. They later spread across the surface, displaced native aquatic plants and blocked the famed upside-down reflection of Mount Myōkō.
Since 2014, locals, junior-high students and volunteers from across Japan have helped reopen the pond’s mirror. They cut lilies from boats and lay weed-control sheets on the lakebed; slowly, open water returns.
Though it looks like a natural mountain lake, Imoriike was built in 1927 as an irrigation reservoir by reshaping a wetland. The human-made pond covers about 1.2 hectares and is surrounded by marsh habitat.
Poet Akiko Yosano visited a villa beside Imoriike in 1938 for a poetry gathering with statesman Yukio Ozaki. She wrote tanka inspired by Myōkō’s nature; 5 are carved on a monument by the pond.
The pond’s spring star, mizubashō (Asian skunk cabbage), has a leafy disguise: its showy white hood is a modified leaf, not a petal. The tiny true flowers crowd the yellow central spike.
A painter’s reminder to preserve the scenery inspired farmer Eitaka Takeo to open the land beside the pond as Eitaka Nature Park in 1975. In 2018, his sons donated the park’s 2 hectares to Myōkō City.
