Nakabashi Bridge in Hida Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, Japan

Over New Years this last year, the other Dave and I spent the holidays, as we often do, traveling around Japan together.  This year’s main target was the stunningly beautiful village of Shirakawa-go in northern Gifu.  Along the way, both on my way in to meet Mr. Krigbaum and his now wife in Shirakawa-go, I stopped off for a night in the small city of Takayama before catching the highway bus to Shirakawa-go.  Originally, my intention was to take in a general feel for the place and get the lay of the land, to get a sort of preview before we spent a day here at the end of our holiday adventure.  I am glad I did, because Takayama is a great place to visit on its own.

Shops in the old merchant district of Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, Japan.

A river runs through Hida Takayama. The merchant quarter runs along this river and both of the town’s daily markets are found on its banks.

Takayama is an old city.  It has been inhabited for centuries and in ancient times was well known for its skilled carpenters.  Takayama (or Hida Takayama as it is known in Japan, as the word Takayama just means tall mountain and is a common place name) was also known for its isolation.  This I can attest to.  Traveling to the old merchant city is not easy.  There is a train, but it is slow, expensive, and leaves every hour or so from Nagoya and takes more than two hours.  The other option if you are traveling from the Tokyo/Yokohama side of Japan is to ride two and a half hours or more on a highway bus (from Nagoya or Shinjuku station in Tokyo).  These buses are best booked days or weeks in advance if you want to be sure of finding a seat on one.  So the journey is long, but the scenery out the window as you get closer is actually worth the difficult trip.  This isolation from the rest of Japan, though, caused the Takayama and the area around it to develop its own culture and architecture.  As we will no doubt mention in our eventual write-up on Shirakawa-go (administratively controlled by Hida Takayama), the steep thatched architecture of the Gassho-zukuri style houses is unique to this region of Japan.

The view from the train ride into Takayama. Most of the trip up to northern Gifu was like this.

Looking down river in Takayama on a snowy day.

shops in the old merchant district of Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, Japan.  This sake brewery is from the Edo period and for 200 yen you can get a small cup for samples.  The sake is good, but be sure to pace yourself.  It can sneak up on your if you’re not careful.

The history of this isolated mountain city is long, but it doesn’t really become significant until the end of the Sengoku Period, when the local samurai built a castle on a nearby hill in 1588, establishing Takayama as the center of what would be called Hida province.  Life in Takayama castle town was uneventful, but the presence of the castle and the fact that the other areas of Hida were even more isolated made Takayama an ideal center for trade in the region.  So, in the early part of the Edo period, merchants set up shop around the castle, building shops and markets throughout the center of the city.  Local mining and forest resources meant that Takayama had plenty to offer in trade.  At the end of the 17th century, the Tokugawa Shogunate moved the local Daimyo and his clan to better territory and took direct control of the mines.  Takayama, however, still remained the political and trade center for the region and soon the small castle town became more of a merchant city.  And much of the old merchant district still exists today, still functioning as it did three hundred years ago.

Takayama at night (above and below)

When you travel to Hida Takayama and first walk around, it is easy to take the city and the merchant district at face value.  On the surface, it is nice, but it looks a bit like the storefronts of Tsumago or the Geisha district of Kanazawa or any other old rows of storefronts and shops.  But on the return trip we realized that there is so much more to it.  Many of these storefronts have passageways between them leading to tea houses, cafes, and restaurants that serve modern fare, but are still decorated and laid out in the old ways.  Small garden courtyards are intermixed with covered passages crisscrossing them and looking up you can sometimes see raised walkways along the rooftops too, as if all the second floor living quarters are also connected.  It feels like the storefronts are not individual buildings or shops, but rather that entire blocks of storefronts are interconnected mazes of souvenir shops, tea houses, coffee shops, and the like, just as they were centuries before.  This is sadly something we only started to realize and explore as our time in this wonderful city was coming to an end.  I will need to return to this old merchant town in the mountains of northern Gifu Prefecture.  And when I do, I’ll try to take a few days to more thoroughly explore the merchant quarter.  There is still a lot that I left undiscovered.

The foundation of Takayama Castle. Once the Tokugawa Shogunate took direct control of Hida province, the castle was torn down and replaced by a Jinya, or government office. If you want to hike the ruins, make sure you wear good hiking shoes and it may not be a good idea to hike it in the winter.  Some of the trails are narrow and can become slick.

The main hall of Takayama Jinya. Not many of these Tokugawa government buildings were built, and this is the only left in its original state.

Hida Takayama, however, is not just the old merchant district.  You can also tour the old Tokugawa Jinya, or government office.  It is the only one left in all of Japan and has many great displays about life, history, and government administration in the Edo period.  Other interesting sites include the two morning markets, various temples and shrines, and the ruins of the old castle.  Hiking the castle ruins are best done in good weather and not in winter, as some of the trails are a bit narrow and the drops rather sharp.  Over all, however, it is a great place to visit.  If you ever visit Shirakawa-go, take a few days on the way in or out to visit Hida Takayama.  You won’t regret it.