Nagano-ken, Japan — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Nagano-ken known for?

Nagano-ken holds nine of Japan's twelve highest peaks, and the ridges of the Japanese Alps draw hikers in summer and skiers in winter to slopes that hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics. Matsumoto guards one of the country's oldest surviving keeps, the black-walled Matsumoto Castle. Further north, pilgrims still climb the worn stone steps to Zenkō-ji, a temple whose founding predates the rise of the samurai shogunate by centuries.

Buckwheat soba, tart mountain apples, and steaming hot springs round out the prefecture's reputation.

Where is Nagano-ken?

Nagano-ken lies in the middle of Honshū, deep inside the Chūbu region and far from any coast. No stretch of coast borders it. No prefecture in Japan touches more neighbours, eight in all, from Niigata in the north to Aichi and Shizuoka in the south.

The land is overwhelmingly upright: three great ranges of the Japanese Alps rise within or along its borders. The Hida Mountains form the northern wall, the Kiso Mountains the central spine, and the Akaishi Mountains guard the southern edge toward Yamanashi and Shizuoka. Nine of Japan's twelve highest summits stand here, which is why the prefecture earns the name the roof of Japan.

Somewhere in the eastern city of Saku lies the single point of Japanese ground furthest from the sea in any direction. Water drains this high country in every direction. The Chikuma River, the name the Shinano River carries through Nagano, gathers alpine snowmelt and flows north to become the longest river in Japan.

The Tenryū River runs south through the Ina valley toward the Pacific, while the Kiso River threads the forested Kiso Valley on its way to Gifu. Between the ranges sit broad, mile-high basins where the towns cluster. Lake Suwa fills one such hollow.

Fields and orchards spread across the flatter floors, and everything else climbs.

What is Nagano-ken like?

People here still call their home Shinshū, the old name for Shinano Province, and the label carries a whole mountain culture. Life bends to the highlands. Cold winters and thin alpine soil pushed farmers toward buckwheat, and Nagano-ken is regarded as the birthplace of Japanese soba; the noodles turn up everywhere from village stalls to festival tables.

Snowmelt from the Hida Mountains feeds the wasabi beds of Azumino. The same cool air ripens apples and grapes on the basin floors, and the prefecture makes more miso than anywhere else in Japan. Only one other prefecture counts more sake breweries.

Faith and old roads run through it too. Zenkō-ji has drawn pilgrims to the north for fourteen centuries, a temple that keeps to no single Buddhist sect and welcomes all of them. Along the Kiso Valley, the stone-paved post towns of the old Nakasendō highway still stand between Kyoto and Edo, their timber inns preserved.

Mountain worship shaped the calendar. Every sixth year the shrines around Lake Suwa haul giant fir pillars down the slopes in the Onbashira festival. Winter belongs to skis and steaming baths, a rhythm the whole prefecture keeps.

What is the history of Nagano-ken?

For most of its past this was Shinano Province, a mountain country of scattered valleys rather than a single domain. That very fragmentation drew warlords. In the Sengoku age the Takeda of Kai and the Uesugi of Echigo fought five times on the Kawanakajima plain within Nagano city.

The modern prefecture took shape in 1871, when the old province was reorganised and renamed for Nagano, the temple town below Zenkō-ji. Its biggest modern moment came with the 1998 Winter Olympics, when a fresh Shinkansen line was cut from Tokyo across the mountains to reach Nagano city.

What is the climate of Nagano-ken?

Height rules the weather here. Landlocked and lifted well above the valleys, Nagano-ken swings hard between its seasons, from snow-buried winters to summers far drier than the humid Japanese lowlands. Moist air off the Sea of Japan dumps heavy snow on the northern towns, and places like Hakuba and Nozawa Onsen bury under metres of it each winter.

The high basins stay noticeably cooler, which is why Karuizawa became a summer refuge from the heat of Tokyo. That same alpine snowmelt feeds the hot springs and the soba fields alike.

How do you get to Nagano-ken?

The rail lines carry in most visitors. The Hokuriku Shinkansen runs from Tokyo up to Nagano city in well under two hours, the fast route built for the 1998 Winter Olympics. From the west, the Limited Express Shinano climbs out of Nagoya through the Kiso Valley to reach Matsumoto, the usual doorway to the Northern Alps.

A few roads cross the high passes, and Matsumoto's small airport takes some domestic flights. Landlocked and ringed by peaks, the prefecture has no port; every arrival comes over the mountains one way or another.