Kunimi, Fukushima

Along the old Ōshū Kaidō corridor, where Route 4 and the Tōhoku Main Line run almost on top of each other, the ground carries a longer memory than the traffic suggests. The earthworks of the Atsukashiyama Bōrui — a double-ditched, triple-ramparted defensive line built in the late Heian period — still run north to south through the fields, a national historic site now half-absorbed into farmland. In 1189, Fujiwara no Kuniie held this line against the armies pushing north. The road that armies once marched along is today the artery that freight trucks and commuters use without a second thought.

Kunimi-machi is also orchard country. The slopes of the Fukushima Basin produce peaches, and at the roadside station Atsukashi no Sato — opened as Fukushima Prefecture's first lodging-type michi-no-eki — the agricultural direct-sales counter fills with seasonal fruit under the name kunimi-damono. The Kunimi Burger, made with local ingredients, is sold here too, unheroic and practical, the kind of lunch that a truck driver and a day-tripper might eat side by side.

At Fujita Station, the entrance to the Kangetstudai Cultural Center is a short walk from the platform. Inside, a Bösendorfer piano sits in a hall that seats several hundred — a civic investment that speaks to the town's quiet self-regard. The Ishimoda Kuyō Sekitō, a stone memorial tablet carved with Sanskrit script in 1308 and known locally as the Mongol Monument, stands as another layer: a Kamakura-period reckoning with distant violence, now a national historic site in a town that the Tōhoku Expressway passes straight through.