Miyoshi, Aichi

Grapes and persimmons grow on the flat land east of Nagoya, and in autumn the roadside stalls of Miyoshi carry pears and Alice melons alongside the ordinary traffic of a working city. The Meitetsu Toyoda Line passes through on two stops — Miyoshigaoka and Kurozasa — and the commuters who board here are as likely headed to a Toyota plant as to a field.

Miyoshi-ike, the large reservoir at the city's center, is used for canoeing, and the surrounding paths fill on weekends with residents doing ordinary things: walking dogs, eating packed lunches on benches. The Miyoshi-ike Matsuri gathers people around the water each year, as does the Dai-Chochin Matsuri with its lanterns. At the Miyoshi Shiritsu Rekishi Minzoku Shiryokan, the exhibits on *bō-no-te* — a form of traditional martial arts using staffs — and the culture of irrigation ponds suggest how deeply agricultural rhythms persist beneath the industrial surface. Manpukuji temple, whose origins reach back to the Nara period, holds a Inari shrine within its grounds that draws worshippers from well beyond the city.

The Ishikawa family residence, a farmhouse built in the Meiji era, still stands as a designated cultural property, its storehouse intact. Noritake and Yasukawa Electric have plants here alongside Toyota, yet the city's festivals — the Iijan Matsuri, the Tenno Jinja Taisai — run on their own calendar, organized by the people who live between the factory gates and the melon fields.