Nakatsukyo Gorge was added to Your Favorites!
Chichibu-Tama-Kai NP, Saitama
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
The mountain village beside the gorge grows a small, pale-pink potato with tender skin you can eat. Locals grill it whole on skewers as imo dengaku, brushed with a savory miso glaze seasoned with perilla seed and Japanese pepper.
Before modern roads, reaching the Nakatsugawa settlements upriver from the area of today’s Takizawa Dam loop bridge meant crossing the river 58 times. Residents carried daily necessities on their backs, and forestry sustained the mountain community.
Nakatsugawa loggers built teppōzeki—wooden dams—in small mountain streams. Once water collected, they released it in a roaring rush that carried felled logs downstream; the community still preserves this distinctive skill.
At Deai in Nakatsukyo, water seeping from a cliff freezes in winter into a natural ice wall more than 50 meters high—a remarkable cold-season counterpart to the gorge’s autumn colors.
A local tale links the name Joro Maple to 2 elegant strangers who appeared during peak foliage, admired the colors, drank and danced, then vanished. Villagers said their graceful forms matched 2 maples nearby; it is folklore, not documented history.
In 1930, forester Seiroku Honda donated about 2,600 hectares of forest around Nakatsugawa to Saitama Prefecture. He stipulated that forest income help fund student scholarships and protect Oku-Chichibu’s scenic landscapes.
Hard sandstone and chert in the Chichibu Belt—roughly 150 million years old—help keep Nakatsukyo steep and resistant to erosion. Its rugged slopes escaped extensive planting, leaving broad areas of natural forest to color the gorge.
In 1933, celebrated poet Mokichi Saito visited Nakatsukyo after holding an Araragi poetry gathering in Chichibu, and left a tanka inspired by the gorge. A national survey of scenic places records the literary visit.
Forest railways carried timber from the Nakatsugawa mountains until 1958. The route was then improved for vehicles, reaching Mikuni Pass in 1966 and connecting the Chichibu side with Kawakami Village in neighboring Nagano Prefecture.
