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Chubu-Sangaku NP, Nagano / Gifu
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Hotaka Shrine spans Azumino, the shore of Myojin Pond in Kamikochi, and Oku-Hotakadake’s 3,190-m summit. Shrine tradition says its deity descended at the peak and connects the Azumi people with seafaring.
Wind, snow and lightning wore away the summit’s old wooden shrine. A stone shrine was built in 1984, slightly off the peak; in July 2013, a new Mine-miya was finally established on Oku-Hotakadake’s actual summit.
The broad Karasawa bowl below Oku-Hotakadake is a glacial cirque—an amphitheater gouged by Ice Age glaciers. The peak forms part of its steep rim, so those dramatic rock walls are literally ice-sculpted.
Japan’s ptarmigan live in isolated central-Honshu mountains at the species’ southernmost global limit. The high country around Oku-Hotakadake is in their range, where their mottled summer plumage turns almost all white in winter.
A 1923 thunderstorm left guide Jutaro Imada’s clients cold and stranded on the ridge, inspiring a refuge below Oku-Hotakadake. The hut counts 1923 as its founding, though its first shelter opened in 1925.
While building the Jutaro Shindo in 1951, guide Jutaro Imada’s 5-year-old daughter Kimiko played at the saddle where the trail branches toward Maehotakadake. The spot became Kimiko-daira, preserving a small family story in the mountain landscape.
At nearby Hotakadake Sanso, 1961 brought two clever upgrades: Jutaro Imada piped water from a snowfield on neighboring Karasawa-dake and named it Tenmei-sui, “water bestowed by heaven”; the hut also installed a wind turbine.
