270px, Bokodaki Iwa
270px, Tagoto-no-tsuki rice terraces
is a mountain peak on the border of the city of
Chikuma and the village of
Chikuhoku in
Nagano Prefecture
is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Nagano Prefecture has a population of 2,052,493 () and has a geographic area of . Nagano Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture to the north, Gunma Prefecture to the ...
in the
Chūbu region
The , Central region, or is a region in the middle of Honshu, Honshū, Japan, Japan's main island. In a wide, classical definition, it encompasses nine prefectures (''ken''): Aichi Prefecture, Aichi, Fukui Prefecture, Fukui, Gifu Prefecture ...
of
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
. It is also called after an old legend. the mountain is located within the borders of the
Yatsugatake-Chūshin Kōgen Quasi-National Park.
Geography
Mount Kamuriki is southwest of the Nagano Basin and is a
Quaternary
The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ...
intrusion into the central uplift zone and western sedimentary zone of northern
Fossa Magna
Fossa Magna is a great rift lowland in Japan. It is often confused with Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line. However, Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line is a line; Fossa Magna is an area. Fossa Magna is Latin for "great crevasse". This name was given by ...
where the sandstone, conglomerate and tuff deposits of the
Tertiary strata were deposited during the time the area was ocean floor. The summit is a bipyrite
andesite eroded lava dome, and although no direct evidence of volcanic activity exists, columnar joints can be observed on the rock on the eastern slope of the summit. A large portion of the summit collapsed during the
1847 Nagano earthquake
The occurred at about 21:30 local time on 8 May at Nagano, Japan. It had a magnitude of 7.4 on the surface wave magnitude scale. It caused the destruction of many houses in Nagano and at least 8,600 people were killed. The earthquake triggered man ...
.
Ubasuteyama legend
The mountain is strongly associated with the
Ubasuteyama legend, which is mentioned in the ''
Kokin Wakashū'' poetry anthology of 905 AD, indicating that the legend itself was much older. Per
Japanese folklore, the pre-modern Japanese practiced
senicide
Senicide, or geronticide, is the killing of the elderly, or their abandonment to death.
Philosophical views
Pythagorean doctrine held that all creatures were being punished by the gods who imprisoned the creatures' souls in a body. Thus, any ...
, whereby an infirm or elderly relative who were a burden on the community were taken to a remote, desolate place, and left there to die. The identification of Mount Kamuriki as this location appears to be from legends in the ''
Yamato Monogatari'' (951 AD), the ''
Sarashina Nikki
The is a memoir written by the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue, a lady-in-waiting of Heian-period Japan. Her work stands out for its descriptions of her travels and pilgrimages and is unique in the literature of the period, as well as one of the ...
'' (1059 AD), and the ''
Konjaku Monogatarishū
, also known as the , is a Japanese collection of over one thousand tales written during the late Heian period (794–1185). The entire collection was originally contained in 31 volumes, of which 28 remain today. The volumes cover various tales fr ...
'', (c.1120 AD) among others. The mountain has a landform (the ''Bokodaki Iwa''), which resembles a person carrying another person on his back up the mountain.
Tagoto-no-tsuki rice terraces
The mountain and the Tagoto-no-tsuki
rice terrace
In agriculture, a terrace is a piece of sloped plane that has been cut into a series of successively receding flat surfaces or platforms, which resemble steps, for the purposes of more effective farming. This type of landscaping is therefore ...
s at its foothills were designated one of the National
Places of Scenic Beauty of Japan in 1990.
and also an
Important Cultural Landscape of Japan in the year 2010.
The Tagoto-no-tsuki rice terraces were developed during the mid-16th century in the middle of the
Edo period, and approximately 1500 rice terraces remain in use. The area under protection by the government is approximately 40 hectares at an altitude of 460 to 560 meters. The landscape was featured in literature and painting subjects, including some ''
haiku'' by
Basho, especially in the Edo period.
See also
*
List of Places of Scenic Beauty of Japan (Nagano)
This list is of the Monuments of Japan, Places of Scenic Beauty of Japan located within the Prefectures of Japan, Prefecture of Nagano Prefecture, Nagano.
National Places of Scenic Beauty
As of 1 January 2021, six Places have been Cultural Prope ...
*
Cultural Landscape (Japan)
A is a landscape in Japan, which has evolved together with the way of life and geocultural features of a region, and which is indispensable for understanding the lifestyle of the Japanese people, and is recognized by the government of under arti ...
*
Ubasute
is a mythical practice of senicide in Japan, whereby an infirm or elderly relative was carried to a mountain, or some other remote, desolate place, and left there to die. Kunio Yanagita concluded that the ubasute folklore comes from India’ ...
References
External links
Shinshu tourism home pageChikuma city home page
{{Authority control
Chikuhoku, Nagano
Chikuma, Nagano
Kamuriki, Mount
Places of Scenic Beauty
