Kamo, Niigata

Three sake breweries stand within walking distance of each other in Kamo — Kamonishiki, Masukagami, and Yukitsubaki — and the town's relationship with fermentation feels as layered as its relationship with wood. The Kamo川river runs through the center of things, and in August the bridges spanning it become anchor points for a long curtain of fireworks that locals call Niagara. These are not incidental details; they suggest a place that has been producing things, carefully, for a very long time.

The craft that defines Kamo most precisely is the paulownia chest, kiri-tansu, whose production here was formally recognized as a traditional craft in the late twentieth century. The lineage traces back to a craftsman named Maruya Koemon during the Edo period's Tenmei era, and the chests — jointed, lacquered, built to breathe with humidity — remain the town's most exported object. Alongside them, Kamo-gami paper and Kamo-jima textile once ran parallel industries through the same narrow valley. Aomi Shrine, founded in the early eighth century and later brought under the patronage of Kyoto's Kamo Shrine, lent the town its historical gravity and its nickname: the small Kyoto of the north.

The station on the JR Shin'etsu Line sits with exits on both sides, east and west, and the covered arcade called Nagaiki Street extends from it for a considerable distance eastward. On a weekday, the pace along that arcade is unhurried. Kamo-yama Park, where snow camellia trees cluster near the shrine, is the kind of ground where residents walk rather than visit. The day-trip bath at Kamobi-jin-no-yu looks out through glass toward Awagatake, the mountain that closes the eastern end of the valley.