Here There Be Dragons

As you may or may not know, depending how dedicated a reader you are and/or how often you talk to me, I live in Honjo, which is in Yurihonjo City in Akita Prefecture. Akita Prefecture is a rural, isolated prefecture in Japan's Tohoku region - the northern end of Honshu, the main island. Akita is at about the same latitude as Vancouver B.C. in Canada. Its summers are hot, averaging well above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and very humid. Its winters are long, cold, and snowy - the average snowfall in Akita is one of the highest in Japan (though the snow is much deeper inland; towns like mine, on the coast, have considerably milder winters). The prefecture is on the Eastern side of the island, on the Sea of Japan. Before receiving my JET assignment, I had no idea Akita Prefecture existed - much less anything else about it. This is in no small part because Akita is one of the least well-known and least-visited prefectures in the country. Few foreigners ever see it; most Japanese never come here either. The prefecture ranks 6th in the country for its size, but 35th for its population. Like so many rural places in developed countries today, Akita is experiencing a "youth exodus". Despite a long tradition in Japan of people staying close to home and family, many young people are growing up and leaving Akita for the jobs, opportunities and general "scene" in big cities down South, like Tokyo and Osaka.

This is probably because Akita Prefecture is one of the most isolated, least-known backwaters in Japan, possibly in the developed world. If you were putting Akita on a map, you'd more or less shrug and write "here there be dragons" and then move on to worrying about someplace civilized and remotely relevant.

So what's there to know about Akita?

Well, first a few trivia facts about what Akita is "known for". Akita is famous for its rice, Akita komachi, said to be the best rice in all Japan. Due to Akita's far northern location, there is only a single rice harvest a year in the prefecture. Akita is also famous for its beef and milk, though not as famous as the better-known Kobe beef. The Hinai-jidori chicken, believed to be one of the most flavorful and delicious breeds of chicken, is also an Akita product. (As a side note, the chickens are much celebrated here - every year there is a festival in their honor, at which people wear chicken outfits, get plastered, and go around the streets doing a ritual chicken dance.) Also well-known from Akita is the Akita-inu, or Akita dog. The famously loyal Hachi, whose statue now graces Tokyo's Shinjuku station, was an Akita dog sold from this prefecture to a family in Tokyo. Perhaps of great interest to the men and some of the women in the audience, Akita is also famous for its women (Akita bijin), who are consistently ranked by the Japanese as the most beautiful women in all Japan. Akita is also famous for its dialect (ben in Japanese), Akita-ben. Akita-ben is considered one of the most challenging dialects in Japan, and is linguistically unique in that it can be spoken without ever fully opening the mouth. The story goes that Akita-dwellers developed the Akita-ben because of the prefecture's brutal winters, which were so cold that they did not want to open their mouths lest their tongues might freeze.

Industry in Akita is primarily centered around agriculture, mining, forestry and fishing. The Sea of Japan off Akita's coast is rich in numerous fish species, and the area has an abundance of trees that can be harvested for lumber. Paddy fields, in addition to some fruit and vegetable farming, checkerboard the landscape. There is not much in Akita in the way of businesses like telecom, technology, or the automotive industry - it's probably comparable to the economies of places in the US like Wyoming, Montana, Idaho or Iowa.

So what's there to do in Akita? Well, if you like hiking or camping (though Japanese camping is more car camping than wilderness trekking), Akita is a great place. It is home to Lake Tazawa, a caldera lake that is the deepest in Japan (measuring 423 meters deep). Lake Tazawa is famous because of its depth, and also that because of its depth it never freezes, not even during the harsh Akita winters. Legend has it that Tatsuko, a beautiful maiden, drank the lake water in the belief that it would grant her everlasting beauty. Greedily, she drank so much of the water that she angered the goddess Kannon, who turned her into a water dragon as punishment. Then one day, Prince Hachirotaro from a nearby village went fishinge. He caught and ate a fish from one of the streams feeding Lake Tazawa. Suddenly, he developed an unquenchable thirst - he drank the lake waters for thirty-three days without stopping, and so he too was turned into a water dragon. Unable to return home in his condition, he slipped into the lake, where he encountered Tatsuko. They became lovers, and some say that it is the passion from their lovemaking that prevents the lake from freezing in the wintertime. Akita is also home to Lake Towada, the largest caldera lake in Japan. Also in Akita Prefecture is Mount Chokai, called the Fuji of Tohoku because of its classic conical shape. Many people hike Chokai in the summer months, though snow makes it impassable during the deep Akita winters. Near Honjo, where I live, you can visit the Walk of the Thousand Jizo, a short hike along a path lined with 1,000 stone statues clothed in red fabric. The jizo are said the be the guardians of children, in particular children who died before they were born or as infants. You can also see the golden Daibutsu, or giant buddha statue, in Ouchi Town. Kakunodate is also in Akita; it is one of the best-preserved samurai towns in the country, with many samurai houses open to visitors. There are numerous onsens, some of them natural hotsprings, and many are considered among the best in Japan. If you're really into geothermal hotspots, you can visit Hell's Gate, a large and dramatic thermal area.

Akita's history is long, and much of it is also lost in the mists of time. Because of its remote location, Akita remained isolated from the rest of Japan (and therefore free of Japanese governmental recordkeeping, etc) until after 600CE. The people of Akita at this time were largely hunter-gatherers, and lived a quasi-nomadic lifestyle. The first real record of Akita is from 658CE, when the Ezo tribes of the region were conquered by Abe no Hirafu. He built a fort, beginning the Japanese settlement of what is today Akita Prefecture. Roughly seventy years later, a castle was built in what is today Akita City. This would serve as the launch point for the Japanese push even further north, into what are today Aomori and Hokkaido, as they strove to conquer the native tribespeople there. Akita Prefecture has changed management numerous times; perhaps most significant for its current manifestation was the 260 year period it was ruled by the Satake clan under the Tokugawa Shogunate. The Satake clan established the agricultural, forestry, fishing and mining industries that are today still the pillars of Akita's economy. Akita's daimyos were among the last to fall to the Meiji restoration, persisting in the Akita tradition of headstrong independence and fierce isolationism. Eventually, though, the daimyos' hold in Akita weakened, and the Meiji Restoration redrew Akita's borders into what is modern-day Akita Prefecture.