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Joshin’etsukogen NP, Nagano
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About 600,000 azaleas carpet Yunomaru, thanks in part to grazing cattle: they avoided the poisonous shrubs while eating competing plants. The meadow became a National Natural Monument in 1956.
The mountain white butterfly (ミヤマシロチョウ) is now found in Japan only in the Southern Alps and around Yunomaru. Its caterpillars depend on particular shrubs, and local nature guides help monitor and protect rare butterflies here.
A local legend—not botanical history—says Yunomaru’s vivid azaleas sprang from the blood of a girl and boy who, forbidden to meet across Jizo Pass, leapt from it together. The story says she ran 15 km each night to visit him.
More than 1,100 plant species flower across Yunomaru from late April to early October. Though the highland is classed as subalpine, its windy, rocky slopes and sheltered wetlands support alpine plants too—including species thought to have survived since the last ice age.
When Yunomaru’s ranch closed in 1995, trees and shrubs began crowding out the sun-loving azaleas. Cattle still graze, but people also cut back encroaching growth by hand to help preserve the flower meadow.
The center’s large diorama maps the Yunomaru–Takamine highlands and the Asama–Eboshi volcano group. Volcanic activity in the group is thought to have begun near Eboshidake about 1 million years ago, then shifted toward today’s Asama.
One of the center’s Nature Meisters spent several years measuring hiking routes from Mt. Eboshi to the Asama foothills, then made a route map and a flowering list of about 230 plants. The center also shares regular flower updates from the area.
Look up before heading out: the visitor center’s roofline was designed to evoke pointed Eboshidake and the rounded summit of Mt. Yunomaru, turning the building itself into a small portrait of the surrounding highlands.
