The northernmost city in Yamanashi. Held between the Yatsugatake range and the Southern Alps, it is the largest municipality in the prefecture.
YUUKA lies within it, at the foot of Mt. Kaikoma.
Yatsugatake to the north, the Southern Alps to the west, Mt. Mizugaki and Mt. Kayagatake to the east. A highland city closed in on three sides by mountains.
The area is 602.48 square kilometres — the largest municipality in Yamanashi, about 13.5 per cent of the prefecture. Of that, 76.4 per cent is forest and related land.
In 2004, seven towns and villages of Kitakoma District merged into a city. Kobuchisawa joined in 2006, making the eight former municipalities that form it today.
Source: City of Hokuto
Mt. Kaikoma, 2,967 metres. It stands at the northern end of the Southern Alps (Akaishi range) almost as an independent peak. One of Kyuya Fukada's hundred famous mountains of Japan.
Most of the Southern Alps is sedimentary rock. Kaikoma is the exception — granite. Some 15 million years ago magma cooled and hardened deep underground; the body of rock was later uplifted to the surface.
Granite is white. So even in summer the mountain looks snow-covered. It was once called the white-crumbling mountain.
From the foot to the summit is roughly 2,200 metres of relief. It rises without preamble.
Source: Geological Survey of Japan, AIST, and others
Granite filters. Rain and snow take a long time to pass through the rock body, and surface again at the foot.
The Ojira River, rising on Kaikoma, is listed among Japan's hundred famous waters by the Ministry of the Environment. So are the Sanbuichi and Otaki springs on the southern flank of Yatsugatake. Three of the hundred are in this one city.
Suntory built its Hakushu distillery here in 1973, after surveying the country and choosing this water.
Yamanashi produces roughly 1.58 million kilolitres of mineral water a year — about forty per cent of the national total.
Sources: Ministry of the Environment; City of Hokuto; Suntory; Yamanashi Prefecture (per Japan Mineral Water Association, 2022 production survey)
Forest and related land covers 76.4 per cent of the city. In some districts it exceeds eighty.
The Minami Alps UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and the Kobushi UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Hokuto holds parts of both within its boundaries.
Sources: City of Hokuto; Minami Alps UNESCO Eco Park
At Jisso-ji temple in this city stands the Yamataka Jindai cherry — a giant Edohigan, its age estimated at anywhere from 1,800 to 2,000 years.
It was designated a National Natural Monument in 1922, and is counted among the three great cherry trees of Japan.
This area was also the ground of a warrior band that held the frontier of old Kai. They served the Takeda, and after the Takeda fell, the Tokugawa.
Sources: Yamanashi Tourism Organization; City of Hokuto. The age is an estimate.
An inland climate. At the Oizumi station: annual mean 10.7°C, 22.3°C in the warmest month of August, minus 0.4°C in the coldest month of January.
2,081 hours of sunshine a year, 1,138 millimetres of rain. More sun and less rain than the national average.
Differences in elevation become differences in climate. Within one city, the season shifts by half a month.
Source: City of Hokuto (Oizumi station)
There is a rice variety called Norin 48. Bred in 1949, it heads late and is weak to disease, and in 1961 Yamanashi dropped it from its recommended varieties. Since then it has been grown almost nowhere but here.
Granite groundwater, soil mixed with white sand, and the swing between day and night. They say it is rice that is still good cold.
The sake is Shichiken. The whisky is Hakushu. Both sit on water that came down the same mountain.
Sources: Yamanashi Prefecture and agricultural cooperative publications
About two hours by the Chuo Expressway from Shinjuku to the Kobuchisawa interchange. About one hour fifty by the Azusa limited express from Shinjuku to Kobuchisawa station.
Close. And still, when you arrive, there is no one.
The foot of Mt. Kaikoma. Stream water polished by granite, firewood that comes off the forest.
Everything written on this page was already here before the first fire was lit.
About YUUKA →Figures on this page are as published by each source. Some, such as the age of the tree, are estimates. The address and the route are not published.