Nishigo, Fukushima

A shinkansen stops here, and the platform at Shin-Shirakawa is briefly busy before the village quiets again. Nishigo is the only village in Japan where a bullet train calls — a fact that sits oddly against the surrounding fields and the forested slopes of the Nasu range rising to the west. Commuters fold away newspapers; the train disappears south toward Tokyo in under two hours.

West of the station, the land climbs steadily. Kashi no Ko Highland sits at the northeastern edge of Nikkō National Park, a gradual plateau beneath the eastern flanks of Mitsuishi-dake. Up here, at Shin-Kōshi Onsen, the air is thinner and the bathhouses are set among trees at considerable elevation — the area carries a designation as a national health resort. Further still, along a road that narrows into forest, Kōshi Onsen has a single inn, Daikokuya, drawing from a spring that has been in use since the Muromachi period.

Nishigo's older layers surface quietly elsewhere. Nagakura Shrine received official recognition in the mid-Heian period, and its worship hall and main sanctuary were later designated village cultural properties. The Harakata-kaidō, a branch of the old Ōshū highway, once ran through this terrain. Now the eastern side of the village functions as a bedroom community for Shirakawa, while the western side holds its elevation and its trees, the two halves sharing little except the name.