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Towada-Hachimantai NP, Aomori
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Local legend says Nakayama’s red lava cliffs were stained by blood in a seven-night dragon battle between Hachirotaro and Nanzo-bo. Tohoku University Museum suggests the tale may echo a real eruption.
Nakayama is not simply a spit of land: it is part of Goshikiiwa Volcano’s flank. Later eruptions opened the 3-km-wide Nakaumi crater between it and Ogura Peninsula—an inner crater nested within Lake Towada’s larger caldera.
Partly submerged around Nakayama are volcanic reefs with memorable names: Ebisu Island, Kabuto Island, Yoroi Island and Roppoishi (“Six-Sided Stone”). A 1928 heritage record describes their column-like and curved rock joints.
Five old pilgrimage roads once met beneath a giant ginkgo at Nakayama’s root. The Nanbu domain planted a 900-m cedar avenue to Towada Shrine, and traveler Sugae Masumi described the tree-lined approach in 1807.
Today’s himemasu began with eggs from Hokkaido’s Lake Shikotsu: Wainai Sadayuki released fry in 1903, and they returned to spawn in 1905. Its Ainu name, kabacheppo, means “thin little fish”; a memorial to Wainai stands on Nakayama’s shrine approach.
Pilgrims had visited the shrine at Nakayama’s root for centuries, yet rough roads kept Lake Towada obscure. Early-20th-century travel writing by Omachi Keigetsu helped put it on Japan’s tourist map.
Most of Lake Towada’s surrounding forest is deciduous, but the rocky slopes of Nakayama and Ogura Peninsulas also shelter kitagoyō, a northern form of Japanese white pine—an evergreen specialist among the broadleaf woods.
After dusk in summer, hime-hotaru fireflies flicker among the forest and shrine approach at Nakayama’s base. Aomori’s history map marks their habitat, and shrine priests told local reporters they have appeared there for a long time.
At the peninsula’s lakeshore stands Kōtarō Takamura’s 1953 Otome no Zo, his final sculpture. Asked whether one maiden’s face was his late wife Chieko, he left the answer to each viewer—a deliberate little mystery.
