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Joshin’etsukogen NP, Nagano
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This highland museum displays fish fossils from when the wider Sugadaira region lay beneath the sea. They’re a striking reminder that today’s mountain landscape once belonged to a very different world.
The museum preserves finds from nearby Karasawa Rock Shelter. A 1963 excavation uncovered Jōmon and Yayoi pottery, plus bone-and-antler tools—unusual inland finds that included arrowheads.
Sugadaira lettuce is Ueda City’s most-produced vegetable. Farmers use elevation-based “relay cultivation” to stagger harvests and extend the season—a living piece of local farming the museum helps document.
The endangered black-fruited hawthorn is a botanical time capsule: in Japan, it grows naturally only in Hokkaido and around Sugadaira. This northern species survives here because the cool, flat marsh suits it.
One explanation for “Sugadaira” points to suge, or sedges: they grow thickly through the marsh below the museum. The place-name may describe the landscape itself, rather than a person or legend.
Today’s marsh began as a lake: volcanic lava blocked a river, creating a basin that gradually shallowed into wetland. The museum stands beside this landscape, shaped by an eruption long ago.
Sugadaira’s open grassland is far older than its ski resort: soil evidence suggests it has persisted for about 4,000 years, and a 1722 map already depicts grassland here. Human use helped shape this ecosystem.
Since 2014, the museum has hosted a living “Marsh Hot Map” created by Tsukuba researchers, local naturalists, community groups and Ueda City. It tracks wildlife in the wetland—not just specimens from the past.
A rare native minnow still survives in the marsh: environmental-DNA sampling detected shinaimotsugo there in June–September during a 2020–2024 study. Researchers tested water, so they could check for the fish without catching it.
Local organizers wanted summer visitors as well as winter skiers, so Hosei University’s rugby team came to camp here in 1931; Waseda followed in 1932. The museum also preserves the area’s ski history.
Opened on August 7, 1971, the museum was created with the old Sanada Town and Tsukuba University’s Sugadaira field station; the university donated many exhibits. Its research partnership began with the museum itself.
In 1987, channel dredging in Sugadaira Marsh drew warnings that straightening and deepening the stream had changed water flow and damaged plants. A conservation agreement followed in 1991.
