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Daisen-Oki NP, Tottori
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
One local story links 鍵掛 to a forked-twig omen: travelers tossed a Y-shaped branch toward a tree for safe-journey luck; farmers heading to Daisen’s cattle fair read its landing as a hint of the price their animals might fetch.
Before cars, Kagikake was a waypoint on Yokote-michi, an old route from Mimasaka (today’s Okayama) to Daisenji. Pilgrims crossed here for the sacred mountain, and travelers also came for Daisen’s famous cattle market.
Daisen is a stratovolcano capped by a lava dome; its andesite breaks down easily, and repeated collapses carved the long, bare south wall framed from Kagikake by beech forest.
At about 910 m, Kagikake sits inside Daisen’s 800–1,300 m beech belt—one of western Japan’s largest natural forests. The same mountain forest is one of the country’s notable breeding grounds for summer birds.
Kofu Town describes Kagikake’s autumn as a two-act show: a burst of multicolored foliage from late October, followed by a second, late-autumn peak in mid-November. The colors arrive in two waves, not one.
After the old road grew over, volunteers from the Okudaisen Furumichi Preservation Council restored more than 4 km between Mitsukue and Shimokaya. The group now hosts an autumn walk along this historic route.
