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Joshin’etsukogen NP, Nagano
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Composer Olivier Messiaen came to Karuizawa’s Bird Forest in 1962 to hear birds live. He set aside a recorder, notated 26 species by ear, and turned their songs into “Karuizawa’s Birds,” a movement of Sept Haïkaï.
Visitors wanting blueberry jam inspired Karuizawa grower Johei Nakayama to use wild Asama berries (kuromamenoki) instead. This purple mountain-fruit jam became a specialty—until cultivated blueberries eventually took its place.
Karuizawa hosted Olympic events in both seasons: equestrian events for the Tokyo 1964 Summer Games, then curling for the 1998 Nagano Winter Games. Few mountain resort towns can tell that two-season story.
Karuizawa’s Oiwake-bushi began as packhorse drivers’ work music among the town’s 3 Nakasendo post stations. It later became both a horse-bell solo and a shamisen-backed parlor tune, and spread into regional songs such as Esashi Oiwake.
Foreign summer residents helped reshape local farming: they taught Karuizawa growers to raise cabbage and Chinese cabbage, suited to the cool highland climate. The shift helped build the area’s now-famous highland-vegetable industry.
Karuizawa-bori began in 1908, when woodcarvers from Nikko were brought in to make Western-style furniture for foreign villa owners. By 1911–12, whole flowering cherry trees carved into the wood became the craft’s signature.
An innkeeper’s hospitality helped launch modern Karuizawa: in 1886, Sato Manpei hosted A.C. Shaw and James Dixon at his old Kameya inn. Their praise spread the word; in 1894 he converted it into a Western-style hotel for foreign guests.
At Karuizawa’s National Wild Bird Forest, one resident is Japan-endemic, nocturnal, and anything but a bird: the Japanese giant flying squirrel. It glides tree to tree and reaches about 80 cm including its tail—among the world’s largest flying squirrels.
Karuizawa introduced Japan’s first bear dogs in 2004. Specially trained to scent bears and bark them back toward the forest without injuring them, these dogs help the town protect people while letting bears remain wild.
Karuizawa’s bear-resistant bins helped make a measurable difference: after the town introduced them alongside other measures to keep bears from food waste, public-bin raids fell from more than 100 in 1999 to 0 in 2009.
Karuizawa was once a winter-skating town as much as a summer resort. A dedicated Ginban-go train and special buses served the rinks, and about 500,000 skaters and visitors came in 1963.
The 1893 railway between Yokokawa and Karuizawa used Japan’s first Abt rack system to climb Usui Pass. In 1912, the same route became the first electrified section of Japan’s national railway main line.
Old Mikasa Hotel was built as a fully Western-style wooden hotel, yet its architect, supervisor, and builders were Japanese. Opened in 1906, it paired local timber craftsmanship with details such as British-made toilet tiles.
