Kamikochi: Japan’s car-free town that autumn hikers love

With a record 35 million foreign visitors expected in Japan this year, Kamikochi is an idyllic, relaxing break from some of the country’s more heavily touristed destinations.

Nestled in the Japanese Alps at 1,500m elevation, the seasonal resort town of Kamikochi is an idyllic, car-free getaway with cool, crisp mountain air, riverside hiking trails and an abundance of Japanese snow monkeys. There are no private homes, year-round residents or chain stores of any kind – no McDonald’s, Starbucks or Burger King; instead, it’s known as an escape from the enervating heat that grips most of Japan in the summertime and for its abundant, sublime autumn colours that peak in October. I loved it immediately, though my teenage sons, Leo and James baulked at the communal shower arrangement in our hotel.

Their mood brightened, though, as I explained that our agenda for our three-day, two-night stay included nothing but hiking, eating and relaxing. “No museums, no temples?” James gleefully asked. We’d arrived in Kamikochi roughly mid-way through a month-long trip around Honshu, Japan’s largest island, and by this point the boys had seen far too many temples, shrines and museums for their tastes. Kamikochi, we reassured them, would be a holiday from our holiday in a simple place with a few clusters of hotels, restaurants and shops all clustered along the Azusa River.

The quest to find pristine natural environs unspoiled by mass tourism long predates the social media era. In his 1896 book, Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alpsthe English missionary, climber and conservationist Reverend Walter Weston echoed the sentiments of an unnamed Japanese writer who complained of “foreign tourists who come to his country, and after rushing through it at the rate of 40 miles an hour then hurry home to record their impressions and pose as authorities on what they have only glanced at”.

In his writings and lectures, Weston popularised the term “Japanese Alps” and put the area that became the resort town of Kamikochi on the radar of international tourists. The town’s popularity as a holiday destination for Japanese tourists spiked in 1927 with the release of Kappa, a novel set in Kamikochi written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, one of Japan’s most famous writers. In 1934, Chūbu-Sangaku National Park, home to Kamikochi and 10 of Japan’s 21 peaks over 3,000m, was established and the area became known as the “most beautiful valley in Japan”, inspiring comparisons with California’s Yosemite National Park.

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