Beach front forests for celebrities: Visiting Oiso Town forests, introduction

Oiso Town

From this post I will tell you for several weeks the greenery of Oiso Town 大磯町, a municipality next to the Hiratsuka City 平塚市. I’ve been there early this year before COVID-19 dominates our conscience. Since then, there are some changes in Oiso due to the pandemic. I’m going to mention it, hoping the arrangement is only temporary. Anyway! The township faces to the Sagami Bay 相模湾 and has a unique meaning in Japanese history. Their forests show such feature. Part of them will be National Meiji Memorial Garden of Oiso 明治記念大磯邸園. It was planned to be partially open in July 2020. Now the inauguration is postponed. I’ll tell you more about it next week … Oiso Town is a nice place to live. Not for nothing Haruki Murakami 村上春樹 keeps his Japanese residence there. Yukio Mishima 三島由紀夫 was a party boy at Oiso Prince Hotel. There lived 8 Prime Ministers in the town. You may have an idea what kind of place, and forest, don’t you?

A morning in Oiso Fishing Harbor. 
They have a restaurant uber-popular,
 but no reservation accepted.
 Reason? They serve food of real fishermen!

First, geography. West of Kanagawa Prefecture was the epicenter for the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. It is the point where the Philippine Plate sinks under the North American Plate, after carrying the seabed from the Pacific Ocean. The tectonic crush continuously pushes up the seabed, creating numerous active fault lines, hills and volcanos such as mountains of Izu Peninsula 伊豆半島, Hakone 箱根, and Mt. Fuji 富士山. Shinseiko Lake 震生湖 (my post on November 15, 2019) is on this fault line. From the area of Shinseiko Lake, a hill is created to the south by the tectonic crash. It is called Oiso Hill 大磯丘陵. The Hill is sandwiched by alluvial fans of the City of Odawara 小田原市 by Sakawa River 酒匂川, and the City of Hiratsuka by Sagami 相模川 and Hanamizu Rivers 花水川. Unlike these two relatively flat areas, south slope of Oiso Hill is steeply tumbling down to the Sagami Bay. The top soil, er roughly 20m or so deep, of the hill is volcanic ashes spewed from the ancient Mt. Hakone that does not exist anymore due to the volcanic collapses. Especially between about 400 thousand to 60 thousand years ago, the debris from the volcano covered the tectonically crumpled-up seabed of Oiso. So, Oiso Hill is one of the most geologically unstable places in Japan. We’ll go there next month. 😉

Oiso Hill seen from JR Oiso Station

Even though, people have lived Oiso area for millennia. Do you remember we’ve been there once for Mt. Takatori 鷹取山 (; my post on December 1, 2017)? The hiking course to Mt. Takatori has shrines worshiped for centuries by Tokugawa Shogunate and the other historical dignitaries. Especially, the beachside to the Pacific Ocean has a long sandy shore along the main road, aka Tokaido, connecting Kyoto and Kamakura, and later Edo (Tokyo). The scenery of long beach with sharply rising hill behind (sans present-day suburban houses), with Mt. Fuji over there, must have been beautiful. Surely, it appeared often in Japanese classic literature as a gorgeous place of moderate climate. Many poets wrote their impression of the vista while they were travelling. The oldest appears in Manyoshu poetry anthology 万葉集 that was compiled in the 8^th century. By the mid-19^th century, the Oiso beachfront became of celebrity. After Meiji Restoration of 1868, the governmental biggies who led industrialization of Japan competed in the area to build their holiday mansions with private beach. Meanwhile, in 1885 a beach in Oiso spared from the “privatization” became the first Japanese bathing-resort for commoners.

The ancient Tokaido, now National Route 1,
 was lined with pine trees when it runs along the seashore.
 In Oiso, such design is preserved,
 and we can feel how it was in, say, 200 years ago.

The Oiso Beach now.
 Surfers congregate all the year round including winter.
😄

When in 1945 Japan was defeated in the World War II, the GHQ of the Allied Forces ordered to dismantle the wealth of such stately homes. Since then, the owners of these real estates have been companies listed in the first section of Tokyo Stock Exchange. Now in the 21^st century, the corporations could not find success to use the places as restaurant, banquet houses, or learning centers for their employees. Not many C-types could maintain their Oiso residence consists of historical buildings of the celebrities 100 years ago. When the area of historical value started to show apparent neglect, ordinary people of Oiso, together with the concerned citizens for history and art, negotiated with the local and national governments to preserve the area. The result is the 2017 cabinet decision to create National Meiji Memorial Garden of Oiso 明治記念大磯邸園. The place was planned to be partially open in July 2020 ...

Seibu Group tried to use the front building
 of the mansion owned by
 the first Japanese modern PM, Hirobumi Ito 伊藤博文,
 as a Chinese restaurant.
 Their business apparently failed …

Next week, I start to tell you my adventure with those “forests” of ex-PMs in Oiso. I found their idea is like that of Lord of Hikone and Prince Fushimi-no-miya who were the owner of the forest now in Hotel New Ohtani of Tokyo (; my post on September 20, 2019). But theirs in Oiso are certainly of the age of industrialization, and with the sad memory of Korea-Japan relationship … Please stay tuned.

If you find environmental issues in Kanagawa Prefecture, please make a contact with Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター

657 Nanasawa, Atsugi City, 243-0121

〒243－0121　厚木市七沢657
Phone: 046-248-0323 You can send an enquiry to them by clicking the bottom line of their homepage at http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/div/1644/