Miyoshi Town

300 years of farming on fallen leaves.

Santome Shinden

Photo by fitm (CC BY-SA 3.0)

01 ／ Santome Shinden

An Edo-era settlement cut into stripsof house, field and wood still lives on.

In 1694 Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, lord of Kawagoe, pushed ahead with clearing the wild Musashino plain, and two years later three villages, Kamitome, Nakatome and Shimotome, held 180 homesteads: this is Santome Shinden (三富新田). Each plot runs in a long strip of house, field and woodland, and the farming method of turning the woods' fallen leaves into compost to enrich the poor soil was recognised as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System in 2023.

Settled in 1694
Three villages, 180 homesteads
Globally Important Agricultural Heritage, 2023

02 ／ Sweet potatoes

What saved the barren uplandwas the sweet potato.

On the thin volcanic-ash soil, only millet is thought to have grown at first. After sweet potatoes arrived in 1751 they were planted widely in Santome, and "Tome potatoes" won a name in Edo. Today they are sold as Tome no Kawagoe-imo (富の川越いも), and in autumn farmers' banners line the Imo Kaidō (いも街道, "Potato Road") in Kamitome, where they sell direct.

Sweet potatoes arrived in 1751
Tome no Kawagoe-imo
Farm stands on the Potato Road

03 ／ Cart puppets

Seated on a small cart,one puppeteer works a large puppet.

In Chikumazawa Kuruma Ningyō (竹間沢車人形), a puppeteer seated on a small wheeled box cart, the rokuro-guruma, works alone a puppet as large as those of bunraku. Cart puppetry spread in the Edo period, and it now survives in only three places: Miyoshi, Hachiōji and Okutama. It died out in the Taishō era but was revived after about 50 years.

One puppeteer per puppet
Survives in only three places
Revived after about 50 years

Living here

10 minutes by bus from the Tojo Line.

about 40,000 people
Rural district town

There is no railway station in town. The town points visitors to Life Bus and the MIYO Bus from Mizuhodai, Tsuruse and Fujimino stations on the Tobu Tojo Line; from Mizuhodai or Tsuruse, the Life Bus takes about 10 minutes to the town office. By car, it is about 10 minutes from Tokorozawa IC on the Kan-Etsu Expressway to the town office, and about 5 minutes from Miyoshi Smart IC to the Potato Road.

People living here: 38,434people
Area: 15.33km²
Households: 15,035households
Rent (average for rentals): 66,533yen
Healthcare: 5 hospitals ／ 13 clinics

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

Children waiting for childcare: —3 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.

Miyoshi Town in Japan35.828°N 139.526°E

Territory of Miyoshi Town

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

4.1km

所沢市, 富士見市, ふじみ野市, 新座市, 川越市, 志木市

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

Miyoshi Town isthis kind of town.

01Santome Shinden, an Edo-era settlement cut into strips of house, field and woodland, survives, and its leaf-compost farming is a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System
02Sweet potatoes that took root on the barren upland are still sold as Tome no Kawagoe-imo along the Potato Road in Kamitome
03Chikumazawa cart puppetry, where one puppeteer on a wheeled cart works a large puppet, is one of three such traditions left in Japan

See the town as it is now.

X@miyoshi_machi ↗

Source: Wikidata (P2002, P2003, P2013, P2397)

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Miyoshi Town official site ↗Wikipedia ↗