Gyokuto Town

Place-name leaves are drawn on a piano.

Station Piano Konoha

Photo by Takaaki Lilongwe (CC BY-SA 4.0)

01 ／ Konoha-zaru (木葉猿)

A clay monkey twisted by fingertips alone,with no mold, and fired unglazed.

The Kumamoto Prefectural Traditional Crafts Center names Gyokuto (Konoha) as the main area of production. Originally left uncolored, the monkeys now also come painted, in forms such as the kodaki-zaru (子抱猿), a monkey holding young ones, and the three wise monkeys. By tradition, in 723 a fugitive from the capital made ritual vessels from the red clay of Mt. Konoha, and the leftover clay is said to have turned into a monkey.

Main production area: Gyokuto (Konoha)
Shaped from clay by fingertips alone, no mold
By tradition, 723 (Yōrō 7)

02 ／ Nishibaru Iron Smelting Site (西原製鉄遺跡)

Nine ironmaking sites are confirmed along the northside of Mt. Sannotake, from mid-slope to foot.

The figure of nine comes from a report by the town board of education (2003). At the prefecturally designated Nishibaru Iron Smelting Site, a survey from December 1979 to January 1980 found two smelting furnaces, which became the basic reference for the “Nishibaru-type smelting furnace” (西原型製鉄炉).

9 ironmaking sites (town report, 2003)
Prefectural Historic Site (designated June 11, 1985)
Furnace remains protected by a building (town list as of April 1, 2020)

03 ／ Harakura Terraced Fields (原倉の段々畑)

Terraced fields built by clearing woodland andstacking local stone spread across the slope.

The “terraced fields around Hankōyama” (半高山周辺の段々畑) in Harakura received an Encouragement Award at the 32nd Kumamoto Landscape Award. The town's tourism site says they were developed on the slope of Mt. Sannotake and grow mainly satsuma mandarins, along with pears, watermelons and other fruit. The judges' comment says residents themselves cleared the woodland and built the terraces with locally gathered stone.

32nd Kumamoto Landscape Award, Encouragement Award (FY2020)
430 hectares (town tourism site)
Mainly satsuma mandarins

Living here

Six minutes on foot from Konoha Station to the town office.

about 5,000 people
Rural district town

The town's access page gives six minutes on foot from Konoha Station on the JR Kagoshima Line to the Gyokuto Town Office (updated January 2023). Yume Station Konoha (ゆめ・ステーション・このは), a facility in front of the station, opened on August 29, 2026 after about one year and five months of closure (town website, updated September 2026).

People living here: 5,045people
Area: 24.33km²
Households: 1,814households
Rent (average for rentals): —
Healthcare: 0 hospitals ／ 2 clinics

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

Children waiting for childcare: —2 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.

Shape

Borders 4 municipalities.

Gyokuto Town in Japan32.919°N 130.629°E

Territory of Gyokuto Town

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

9.3km

玉名市, 熊本市, 山鹿市, 和水町

Travel times per leg are not published by the municipality, so they are not shown.

Gyokuto Town isthis kind of town.

01“Station Piano Konoha” (駅ピアノこのは) is a piano in Kōryū Salon Konoha (交流サロンこのは), next to JR Konoha Station. In keeping with the place name Konoha, leaves of the town's specialties such as Honey Rosa plums and mandarins were painted on it by a member of the town's community revitalization cooperator program in 2020.
02Inasa Kumanoza Shrine (稲佐熊野座神社) is said to have been invoked from the Kumano-za Shrine in Kii in the first year of Wadō (708). Within its grounds, the foundation stones of the Inasa temple ruins, a prefectural Historic Site, have been restored, and a large nagi tree said to have been planted at the time of the invocation is a town Natural Monument.
03The town's name was chosen by public call at the time of the 1955 merger; of 359 entries, 121 proposed “Gyokuto-mura” (玉東村). According to the town's list of designated cultural properties, Igata Reiu (伊形霊雨), a mid-Edo-period poet, was born in Konoha and served as a professor at the domain school Jishūkan (時習館); his family's grave is a town Historic Site.

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Gyokuto Town official site ↗Wikipedia ↗