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Oze NP, Fukushima
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Edo-period records say a wildfire scorched the mountains around Numayama Pass, earning it the nickname Yakeyama-toge, “Burned Mountain Pass.” The cleared slopes once revealed Lake Ozenuma and Mt. Hiuchigatake; regrown fir forest now hides them.
An 1809 account called the Aizu–Numata mountain road too rough for packhorses. Still, exchange huts by Lake Ozenuma let traders swap Aizu rice and sake for Numata salt and oil, a trade that lasted into the early Meiji era.
A road to Numayama Pass opened in 1970 with help from Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. The planned car route across Oze to Gunma was halted in 1971 after conservationist Nagayasu Hirano appealed directly to the Environment Agency chief.
In 1868, Aizu forces crossed Oze along the old route to fight at Tokura, in present-day Gunma. The fighting there burned the checkpoint; wartime patrols and skirmishes also took place around Lake Ozenuma and Sanpei Pass.
A 12-by-6-meter slope by Numayama’s former rest-stop toilet held 47 plant species, including 13 alien species. In 2019, researchers removed 96 flowering French daisies there, along with many nonflowering plants.
Japan’s environment officials cite a sika deer sighting at Numayama Pass in 1925. Tracks were later recorded at nearby Kobuchizawa Tashiro in 1993, making Oze’s deer story more complicated than a simple tale of a recent arrival.
