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Oze NP, Fukushima
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Spot a Japanese stoat in Oze and Ozenuma Visitor Center can give you a “stoat discovery certificate.” It’s a real little prize for catching sight of one of the park’s wild mammals.
At an Edo-era trading post on Lake Ozenuma, Aizu travelers traded rice and sake for Numata’s salt and oil. The visitor center stands on this old route; coins found near Sanpei-shita are displayed at nearby Ozenuma Sanso.
At nearby Oe Marsh, a low earthen rampart recalls the 1868 Boshin War: Aizu forces built it while stationed in the marsh, expecting an advance. The fighting with government forces took place at Tokura instead.
Lake Ozenuma likely formed about 8,000 years ago, when a debris avalanche from Mt. Hiuchigatake blocked the Numajiri River. The visitor center’s CGI exhibit helps show how this landscape took shape.
In 1920, local conservationist Hirano Chozō petitioned to protect the scenery around Lake Ozenuma. Oze’s later dam controversy helped give rise in 1951 to Japan’s first nature-conservation organization.
Oze began its bring-your-rubbish-home campaign in 1972, before any other Japanese national park. The following year, more than 1,400 bins were removed, and the conservation idea spread nationwide.
A 3.55-km fence protects flower-rich Oe Marsh, east of Ozenuma, where deer browsing sharply reduced Nikko-kisuge blooms. Crews remove the 2-m-high fence before snowy winter and put it back after the thaw.
Ozenuma’s underwater residents include pea clams and Katashajikumo, a freshwater alga, as well as salamanders, frogs and aquatic insects. Japan’s Environment Ministry lists the lake as an Important Wetland for its habitats.
Ozenuma’s visitor center began in 1964, was rebuilt and reopened in 1986, then got today’s neighboring building in July 2021. The lakeside information point has been welcoming and interpreting Oze for generations.
Ozenuma Visitor Center is also a working conservation base: staff patrol the park, interpret its natural features, and help restore vegetation around Lake Ozenuma and Mt. Hiuchigatake.
