Nosegawa Village

Priest: a spared cedar pierces the roof.

Kojin Shrine, Tateri Kojin

Photo by Dokudami (CC BY-SA 4.0)

01 ／ Okonai

A ring of vines twisted apart with a cedar log:the Okonai of Kitaimanishi.

The Okonai of Kitaimanishi has been held in the Amida hall on 2 January, a rite for a good harvest. By the Nara Prefecture archive, a large ring woven from dozens of shirakuchi-kazura vines is hung up, and in the middle of the sutra chanting men thrust a cedar log into it and twist it apart; the rite ends with an auction of standing rice cakes. The prefecture designated it an Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1977.

Prefectural Intangible Folk Cultural Property, 1977
Auction of standing rice cakes
Six households carry it on (2018)

02 ／ Origins

In 1889, three kumi groupings mergedand Nosegawa Village was born.

The village says that in April of Meiji 22 (1889) three kumi groupings merged and the present Nosegawa Village came into being. It lies at the south-western tip of Nara Prefecture, borders Wakayama Prefecture, and measures about 10 km east to west and about 20 km north to south, at 400 m to 1,344 m above sea level. The village gives no account of how the grouping names relate to the village name. The photograph looks south from the Taira hamlet.

Merged in April 1889 (Meiji 22)
About 10 km east-west, 20 km north-south
400 to 1,344 m above sea level

03 ／ Sister city

In 1997, a local dish on the village websitedrew the interest of a Slovak ambassador's wife.

By the village's account of the exchange, it began in the summer of 1997, when the wife of the Slovak ambassador to Japan took an interest in a local dish presented on the village website. The ambassador and his wife visited the village that October, and on 12 September 2003 a signing ceremony for a sister-city agreement with Vysoké Tatry was held. The village's record of the exchange runs only to 2003.

Exchange began in summer 1997
12 September 2003: sister-city signing ceremony
The record runs to 2003

Living here

From Koyasan Station, 40 minutes by weekday village bus.

about 1,000 people
Rural district town

There is no railway station in the village. The village (updated 16 April 2024) says to take the village bus on weekdays and the Nankai Rinkan bus on weekends and holidays for the Koyasan side; the village bus does not run on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays or over the New Year. By the village bus timetable it is 40 minutes from Koyasan Station to the village office. The Nankai Rinkan Tateri line runs only the first service on weekends and holidays for the time being.

People living here: 357people
Area: 154.9km²
Households: 204households
Rent (average for rentals): —
Healthcare: 0 hospitals ／ 1 clinic

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

Children waiting for childcare: —0 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 6 municipalities across 1 prefectures.

Nosegawa Village in Japan34.166°N 135.633°E

Territory of Nosegawa Village

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

17.7km

Nara Prefecture: 五條市, 十津川村
Wakayama Prefecture: 高野町, かつらぎ町, 有田川町, 田辺市

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

Nosegawa Village isthis kind of town.

01Kojin Shrine (Tateri Kojin) is said to have been enshrined by Kobo Daishi when he founded Koyasan, and stands on a mountain summit. Its priest tells Nara Prefecture's Inori no Kairo site that when the main hall was rebuilt, a cedar growing in the precinct was not felled but let grow up through the roof
02The Okonai of Yumitehara is also prefecturally designated, like Kitaimanishi's; by a 2018 statement recorded by the prefecture it was suspended after fiscal 2015, and film and a report remain as a record. The prefecture describes Okonai as a rite for a good harvest, held in village temples and shrines from the New Year into early spring
03Taira no Koremori is said to have ended his life in this village after wandering the mountains of Kumano and Yoshino, and the village says its Taira no Koremori Historical Village has a history museum and his mound. The prefecture's migration portal writes that tofu making that began at the end of the Edo period flourished from the late Taisho to early Showa era, with about 130 tofu workshops

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Nosegawa Village official site ↗Wikipedia ↗