Yaotsu Town

Thatch covers a hall 5.4 m square.

Myokyo-ji Temple Kannon Hall

Photo by 大野一将 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

01 ／ Kutami itokiri karakuri

On two-wheeled festival floats, thepuppeteer's strings are cut once by gears.

Every year on the third Sunday of April, the festival of Kutami's two shrines stages puppet plays on top of six floats. Young people of each district create new puppets every year. The show is selected as a nationally recognized intangible folk cultural property for which documentation measures should be taken, and is a Gifu Prefecture Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property.

National selection, December 8, 1975
Prefectural Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property
Six floats

02 ／ Nishikori Tsunaba

Timber driven down from the Kiso mountainswas first bound into rafts here.

A raft base for Kiso timber, where a local government office was set up in 1665 (Kanbun 5), with a magistrate and 138 officials stationed there, the town writes. Some 300,000 single logs a year were bound into rafts, and rafting usually ran from the autumn equinox to the spring equinox. A kuroganemochi tree, a Town Natural Monument, stands where the office was.

Local government office, 1665 (Kanbun 5)
138 officials
300,000 logs a year

03 ／ Yaotsu danjiri

Three boat-shaped floats line upin front of Town Hall as one ship.

At the festival of Obune Shrine, Yaotsu's local guardian shrine, held on the second Sunday of April and the day before, the floats are lashed with wisteria vines and no nails. The town's material gives the length of one float as 9 m. The festival is said to have begun in the Genroku era (1688-1704), and the three floats are a Town-designated Tangible Folk Cultural Property.

Town-designated, April 2, 1984
Length 9 m (town material)
Began in the Genroku era (1688-1704)

Living here

A town without a station: 25 minutes by bus from Meitetsu-Akechi.

about 10,000 people
Rural district town

There is no railway station in town. The town-run YAO Bus links Meitetsu-Akechi Station and Yaotsu Town Family Center, and on the timetable revised April 1, 2024 it runs on weekdays and on weekends and holidays, the fastest in 25 minutes, with adult fares of 150 to 400 yen. The present area was formed in 1955-56 by merging five villages into the town.

People living here: 10,195people
Area: 128.79km²
Households: 3,879households
Rent (average for rentals): —
Healthcare: 1 hospital ／ 11 clinics

Area and habitable land at the same scalee-Stat B1101 / B1103

Children waiting for childcare: —4 nurseries and similar
Home purchase subsidy: —
Average annual temperature: —

These 3 items are waiting on a nationwide data source. We do not fill them with estimates.

ACCESS

Where you can go from here.

Yaotsu Town in Japan35.476°N 137.142°E

to Meitetsu AkechiLocal bus25min

Travel times follow 町公式『YAOバス・コミュニティバス・デマンド交通』（https://www.town.yaotsu.lg.jp/1457.htm。ページの更新日表示は 2023-02-21、本文は『YAOバス（令和6年4月1日改正）』）の時刻表PDF（https://www.town.yaotsu.lg.jp/secure/1496/yaobus.pdf。Last-Modified 2024-04-17。令和6年4月1日改正。画像として目で読んだ）。『平日』と『土・日・祝日』の2つのダイヤがあり、どちらも毎日運転。八百津町ファミリーセンター前 ⇄ 名鉄明智駅 (checked 2026-10-15). They vary by time of day.

Shape

Borders 8 municipalities.

Territory of Yaotsu Town

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

12.2km

七宗町, 恵那市, 御嵩町, 川辺町, 白川町, 美濃加茂市, 瑞浪市, 可児市

Yaotsu Town isthis kind of town.

01Myokyo-ji Temple Kannon Hall is a thatched hall three bays by three bays and a nationally designated Important Cultural Property. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to the late Muromachi period, while the town records a tradition that it was built in 1368 (Joji 7); the Agency describes it as mostly Zen-style, with details that combine the Japanese style
02Kutami's itokiri karakuri is a puppet play on festival floats in which gears cut the puppeteer's strings once; it is a national selection and a prefectural designation. Yaotsu Danjiri is a festival in which three boat-shaped floats line up in front of Town Hall. Nishikori Tsunaba was a raft base on the Kiso River
03The town's Chiune Sugihara Memorial Hall website introduces Yaotsu as the place where Chiune Sugihara was born. The stone screen gate of Kumano Shrine is a nationally registered Tangible Cultural Property, and the Kamidaida terraced rice fields in Kitayama are certified among Japan's 100 Terraced Rice Fields

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Yaotsu Town official site ↗Wikipedia ↗