Kamikitayama, Nara

Forest covers nearly all of Kamikitayama — the road along Route 169 threads through it like a seam, and the trees press close on both sides. The village sits deep in the mountains of southeastern Nara, cradled between the Ōmine range to the west and the Odaigahara plateau to the east, with the Kitayama River running through the valley floor. What timber once built — the prosperity of *goyōzai* and *kumanozai*, those prized forest materials sent outward from these hills — the forest has quietly reclaimed, leaving a village that now measures its economy in visitors rather than board-feet.

The Michi-no-Eki Yoshinoji Kamikitayama, the first roadside station of its kind in the prefecture, sits on Route 169 as a practical hinge between the outside world and the village interior. A short distance from the station, the Kamikitayama Onsen — a sodium bicarbonate spring developed in the 1980s beside the Kitayama River — operates within the Foresto Kamikita facility, which opened in 2020. The water is unremarkable in its setting until you notice the silence around it: no background traffic, no adjacent neighborhood, just the river and the ridge. At Mizuwake Shrine, a colony of *shishinran* — a plant protected as a natural monument — grows among the roots, rooted in a place that has long been a site of Shugendo practice.

The Ōmine Okugake-dō, a pilgrimage trail designated as part of the World Heritage sacred sites of the Kii Peninsula, passes through this terrain. Odaigahara, the high plateau that defines the village's eastern edge, draws those who climb the Hillclimb Odaigahara event up its slopes. The construction of Sakamoto Dam in the early 1960s submerged entire hamlets beneath its reservoir — that history sits underneath the water, unspoken but present, as the village continues to hold its ground in the deep hills.