Motomiya, Fukushima

The Abukuma River cuts through the basin from north to south, and on either side the land rises gently — forested hills to the west, lower ridges to the east. This geography made Motomiya a crossroads long before the railways arrived: the Aizu Kaido began here, and the roads to Miharu and Soma met at this same point. The town grew as a post station, and something of that layered transit still clings to the streets around Motomiya Station, which opened in the Meiji era and received a new elevated concourse only recently.

Adatara Shrine, founded in the Heian period and once the presiding sanctuary of the old Adachi district, anchors the town's ritual calendar. In May and again in October, the shrine holds its festivals, and during the autumn one, a taiko-dai float moves through the streets. A few minutes away, Wada Shrine preserves a tradition of Izumo-style kagura dance, offered at its spring and autumn festivals. The wooden theater known as Motomiya Eiga Gekijo — a three-story timber structure built in the early twentieth century — stands as one of the few remaining venues of its kind in the Tohoku region, its proportions belonging to a different era of public gathering.

The city's agricultural side surfaces in its specialty products: toroimo, the sticky mountain yam, and the silkie chicken known as Motomiya Ukokkei. These are not dishes invented for visitors. They belong to the ordinary provisioning of this inland basin, where the Tohoku Expressway and National Route 4 pass through without necessarily stopping.