Hida Furukawa

In the Hida mountains of northern Gifu, a short train ride beyond Takayama, the town of Hida Furukawa keeps a slower pace. Water runs clear in the Setogawa, a narrow canal that threads between white-walled storehouses, and from spring into late autumn hundreds of carp drift in it, bright against the dark stone and pale plaster. Takayama draws the crowds; Furukawa, a quarter of an hour up the same line, is where the Hida countryside goes quietly about its day.

A town that lives at its own pace

Furukawa was a castle town, and it still feels like a working one rather than a place set out for visitors. Along Ichinomachi and the neighbouring lanes stand old merchant houses, latticed shopfronts and a couple of long-established sake breweries, the round cedar balls at their doors marking the season's brew. The carp give the streets their rhythm: they swim in the Setogawa roughly from April to November, then move to the pond at the Masushima Castle ruins to winter over before returning in spring. Feed can be bought at shops along the water, and a kimono rental makes for an easy walk between the storehouses. Because most travellers stop only at Takayama, the lanes here stay calm even in high season.

The Furukawa Festival and the okoshi-daiko

Once a year the quiet breaks. The Furukawa Festival, the spring rite of Ketao Wakamiya Shrine, fills the town on April 19 and 20. On the night of the 19th comes the okoshi-daiko, the "rousing drum": a great drum is raised on a tall wooden frame and carried through the streets by crowds of men in loincloths, while teams press in around it with smaller drums of their own. The next day, tall yatai floats — carved, gilded and hung with embroidery, some carrying mechanical karakuri puppets — process through the old town. The okoshi-daiko and the float procession are designated a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property and are inscribed on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

For anyone visiting outside those two days, the Hida Furukawa Festival Exhibition Hall keeps the festival on show all year, with real floats displayed indoors, karakuri demonstrations, and a chance to try striking the okoshi-daiko.

The mark of the Hida carpenters

Furukawa is one of the homes of the Hida no Takumi, the carpenters whose skill has been prized since ancient times, when craftsmen from Hida were sent to the capital to raise its temples and palaces. Their signature is carved into the town itself: under the eaves of many houses sits a kumo, a cloud-shaped bracket, and each carpenter cut his own cloud pattern as a kind of maker's mark, so that many different clouds can be found along the streets. The tradition is gathered at the Hida no Takumi Craft Museum, a building joined entirely without nails in the old way; its own eaves carry the cloud marks of the carpenters who raised it.

Good to know

Furukawa is easiest as a half-day from Takayama: a local train on the JR Takayama Main Line takes about fifteen minutes, and some Limited Express Hida trains continue here too, with the old town only a short walk from the station. The carp are in the canal roughly from April to November, and the Furukawa Festival falls on April 19 and 20 — lodging around those nights books up far in advance. The Festival Exhibition Hall and the Craft Museum keep regular closing days and shorter winter hours, so it is worth confirming times and fares officially before you set out. Some visitors arrive already knowing the town from the animated film Your Name. (Kimi no Na wa.); the station and the nearby Hida City Library are among the places fans recognise, and the local tourism office maps a route between them. For the livelier sister town just down the line, see Takayama Old Town; for the thatched farmhouses deeper in the mountains, see Shirakawa-go.