Towada-Hachimantai

Towada-Hachimantai National Park was declared in 1936 and is shared between the prefectures of Aomori, Akita and Iwate, in northern Honshu. It is made up of two separate areas that share a volcanic origin but each have a character of their own.

The first is organised around Lake Towada, a flooded double caldera of deep blue water ringed by wooded slopes. The Oirase River flows out of it, running for some fourteen kilometres through a narrow gorge regarded as one of the most celebrated river landscapes in Japan: a succession of rapids, waterfalls and moss-covered rocks beneath a canopy of beech and maple that draws huge crowds in autumn. Nearby rise the Hakkoda mountains, a volcanic group known for its hot springs, its high-altitude meadows and the so-called snow monsters, firs coated in ice and packed snow in winter.

The second area is the Hachimantai plateau, a volcanic complex of gentle relief dotted with crater lakes, upland wetlands and fumarole fields, with a dense concentration of traditional onsen on its lower slopes, some among the oldest and most rustic in the country. The forest cover is dominated by beech woods of Fagus crenata, the southern extension of the same forest type that Shirakami-Sanchi protects, and holds Japanese black bear, serow, macaque and a rich forest birdlife.