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Oze NP, Fukushima / Tochigi
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Mount Tashiro’s broad summit is an ancient volcanic landform: eruptions roughly 10 million to 1 million years ago buried local valleys in ash and pyroclastic flows; erosion later sculpted the tableland.
At 1,971 m, a single gently sloping bog covers about 20 hectares, with no stream flowing into it. Cold slows plant decay, letting peat build up and store rain and snowmelt like a sponge.
Fukushima Prefecture’s local-history account says villages once barred entry, fearing demons lived on Tashiro. On July 30, 1912, local landowner Zenhachiro Tokisumi Oyama climbed with 2 Koyasan priests and enshrined Kobo Daishi.
About 400 alpine plant species share Tashiro’s summit marsh. Look for cottony watasuge, star-shaped chinguruma and golden kinkoka—different blooms brighten the short mountain summer.
An early-19th-century Aizu gazetteer described Tashiro’s broad mountain plain and recorded reported “traces of rice plots.” It hints at an old story of cultivation, but isn’t proof that crops grew there.
Among Tashiro’s marsh plants grows sundew, a tiny carnivore: sticky droplets on its hair-fringed leaves trap insects, which the plant digests for nutrients.
On the forest trail between Mt. Taishaku and Tashiro’s summit marsh, Japan-endemic osabagusa blooms in dense clusters from mid-June to early July. It belongs to a genus with just one species.
The summit’s Kobo Daishi Hall also serves as a refuge hut. In a Fukushima Prefecture interview, a descendant of the 1912 founder said he had inherited its care and climbed the mountain each year to maintain it.
During the October 2019 typhoon, a landslide tore down Tashiro’s west slope and came close to the summit marsh; debris flowed into the Nishine River below.
