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Joshin’etsukogen NP, Nagano / Gunma
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Mato-iwa is a 400-metre-long andesite dyke. Its curtain-like exposed face stretches about 200 metres, yet is only 2–4 metres thick and rises 15 metres. It became a National Natural Monument in 1940.
Mount Azumaya crowns a roughly 3.5-kilometre caldera, whose rim also includes Mount Neko and Mount Urakura. Water gathered on the mountain drains through the breached rim as the nearby Yonako Falls.
At the summit, 2 shrines face opposite directions: the eastern is the Jōshū (Gunma) shrine, the western the Shinshū (Nagano) shrine. The north–south line between them marks the prefectural boundary.
The mountain’s broad foothills connect two highland harvests: Tsumagoi’s summer–autumn cabbage grows in cool fields around 700–1,400 metres, while nearby Sugadaira is known for lettuce.
A surviving black-lacquered door from the summit shrine records its repair in 1562. Its inscription names Sanada Yukitaka—written there as Yukitsuna—and Nobutsuna as patrons; the door is kept at Yamaga Shrine below.
Mato-iwa means “target rock”; local legend says Minamoto no Yoritomo used it for archery during a hunt in 1193. Another tale blames a hollow in its face on a giant’s rice ball—folklore, not geology.
A route account drafted in 1834 describes stone shrines every chō (about 109 metres) on the climb from Sanada, and crowds ascending on the traditional sixth-month 13th.
Local legend says Yamato Takeru looked from Azumaya over a sea of clouds, remembered his wife Ototachibana-hime, and cried “Azuma haya” (“Ah, my wife!”). The tale links the names Agatsuma and Tsumagoi.
Sugadaira’s grassland around Azumaya and Neko is older than its maps: soil radiocarbon dating suggests about 4,300 years of grassland, while a 1722 map already shows the plateau largely open.
