Botanical urbanization: Shin-Tomei Expressway and planting seedlings

Tomei Expressway is THE artery road for Japan. Connecting Tokyo (“To” part) and Nagoya (“mei,” that is), tons of traffic use this road 24/7. It has many congestions here and there despite it is a toll road and does not have a traffic light. To ease the burden of very busy artery, Japanese government is building an alternative toll road named Shin-Tomei Expressway (“New Tomei”). Well, actually, at least in Kanagawa Prefecture, everybody calls this road Daini-Tomei (“Second Tomei”). So, in this post, I call it Daini-Tomei. Daini-Tomei connects Toyota City, the neighboring city of Nagoya and of course where Global HDQ of Toyota locates, and Ebina City in Kanagawa. At Ebina it joins with Tomei Express Way so that we in Yokohama murmur the effect of Daini-Tomei is not much for congestion of Yokohama IC … Anyway, the construction started during the 1990s, and expected to be completed in 2023. The last remaining part of the construction is at the entrance of Yadoriki Community. They are still preparing tunnels there. Rumor says they’ve encountered some technical trouble under Tanzawa Mountains. The date of full opening could be delayed.

Construction site near Yadoriki.
Hmmmm …
the mouth of the tunnels is not connected to any road yet
 … it would take time for completion …

Near above tunnel is the dumping ground brought from the digging.
Before, the place was one of the garbage lots for neighboring towns.
 As of October 2021, machines are still busy there to stabilize the soil.

Having said that, between Ebina and Hadano IC, the main construction work is done and Shin-Hadano IC and neighboring SA will be open early next year. The local economy who are suffering the impact of COVID-19 has high hopes for new artery road that may bring more visitors. Service Area has the name “Hadano-Tanzawa” where bounties, like veggies, from villages of Tanzawa Mountains will be sold. Business chance! City Hall of Hadano 秦野 is busy marketing the road and places. They are also inviting locals to be familiar with the new road. One such event is Tree-planting Festival on October 23 on the embankment slope of the road. About 60 citizens of Hadano City who raised their hand to join the occasion will enter the site that is normally off limit for pedestrians. I’ll act as a forest instructor to help their planting. The other day we had a preliminary checking session for the festival. This week is my story about this adventure. Well, not as humongous as dams, artery road construction site by the national government looked, I would say, …

Unlike Tomei Expressway that runs along the coast in Shizuoka Prefecture 静岡県, Daini-Tomei runs mainly mountainous inlands. It deforested forests, razed small hills and mountains, and punched holes in the slopes of large mountains. The road site in Hadano was once a sleepy satoyama for agricultural community. When the construction started, NEXCO Central, the actual execution manager of the project, collected seeds of deforested oaks and nurtured seedlings from them. Some acorns were entrusted to kids of elementary schools whose backyard became the construction site. Roughly for 10 years they have been reared to be planted on the embankment. Kanagawa Prefecture also adds selectively bred pollen-less cedars (my post on December 16, 2016) named “Tanzawa Mori-no-Mirai (“Future of Forests of Tanzawa”) whose parent tree was found in Hadano City. I have heard these days it is a common knowledge among professional botanists bringing seedlings from the other places could degrade biodiversity of the place. The foreign plants have difficulty to survive in new environment, and so reforestation often fails. The idea of planting trees out of the seeds of locals is commendable. My point is, the environment these baby trees is not same as for their parents. The way to plant them tells the story.

Backyard for Daini-Tomei.
It is still an agricultural community.

The festival site is near Kami Elementary School 上小学校, the oldest in Hadano City whose predecessor was a temple school since the 17th century. We walked very idyllic country road for few minutes and entered the gate that separated the controlled area of the artery toll road from the ordinary rural community. The forests of broad-leaved trees suddenly opened up with still bare earth where huge construction machineries were operating. The embankment was covered by manufactured green cover mulch which was “Ah, yes, it can control weeds.” The planting will be on the space intentionally “cut” for the seedlings, just like tulips in flower beds. “The markings for location of planting will be ready on that day of festival. The visitors just dig a bit by a small trowel, add this slow-releasing fertilizer at the bottom, locate the root, and finish the planting by adding soil mixed with another fertilizer. It should be easy.” NEXCO people said. Er, well, yeah. It was not the thing we normally do for afforesting. It’s more like a gardening in the city centre.

The construction site

NEXCO is busy treating the embankment with synthetic mulch.

Beds for oaks … are you serious?

Come to think of it, the land for the artery road is intentionally piled up and mechanically hardened for heavy traffic. It’s not as fluffy as forest floor which is made of lots of organic material. The place is just like Olympics Village where the land was once sea but reclaimed by dumping enormous amount of rubbish from megalopolis Tokyo. On the embankment of the Expressway, the nutrition for baby oaks would be very poor. They need lots of fertilizer. With such way of planting, even in 20 or 30 years’ time, the embankment will not be the satoyama forest once the place was. That’s the meaning of “development” … OK, OK. If we recreate natural forest, it will be very hard for protecting the national artery road from encroaching wild vegetation. In the end, Expressway is for factory-made cars to buzz. The acorns from the rural forest will call that urban embankment home … They may be very like us.

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/

Resilience: Forests in Komayama Park 高麗山

 

From Shonandaira 湘南平, without using driving road or going back the same route we’ve taken so far, there are two routes to return to the beachside. Two roads divert after we check the highest point of Komayama Park 高麗山公園, Mt. Sengen 浅間山 of ASL 180.9m. So, let’s go to Mt. Sengen first by taking the ridge road to the east. This part of our itinerary could be the most well-prepared route in our adventure of Komayama Park. It is a wide road with several garden trees intentionally planted by humans. Local volunteers take care of such trees, including a row of hydrangea and a field of turf lilies. Also, the place is one of two secretly famous spots for Japanese bird watchers to observe migratory birds commuting between Southeast Asia and Eurasian Continent via Pacific Ocean. For those species spending their summer in Siberia, passing over Komayama Park to the south would be around the second week of September. There are not many obstacles for us on the ridgeway to see the creatures enjoying the final stopover before crossing the Ocean. If you have any chance to come here in September, please try which bird you could find! (Another mecca for Japanese bird watchers is Cape Irago in Aichi Prefecture 愛知県伊良湖崎. The season to go there is also in the second week of September.)

The road is wide.

In winter, the ridgeway of Komayama Park has
 several colonies of daffodils.
 Smells nice!

At the top of Mt. Sengen, in winter.

Roughly 300 or so meters after Mt. Sengen to the east, we come across a Y-crossing. One road directly going down is the route bringing us to Komashimizu Bus Stop 高麗清水. From there by Kanchu Bus Hira 平 33, 35, and 36 services we can return to JR Hiratsuka Station in 20 or so minutes. (Timetable is here.) Although the road is a narrow trekking route, it’s a one-way going down, and physically less demanding compared with another route. We can enjoy this road for its rich forest floor vegetation. If you prefer walking for leisurely nature observation from Shonandaira, I recommend this route.

The Y-crossing to the Bus Stop

Damnacanthus indicus in Komayama Park,
 typical bush tree for warm coast in Japan

Autumn leaves here will be its peak
 in late December.

Komashimizu Bus Stop
 to Hiratsuka Station

Another route from the Y-crossing is visiting Mt. Koma 高麗山, ASL 168m, then goes down to Oiso Town 大磯町 via Takaku-jinja Shrine 高来神社. Whenever you find the name of place “Koma 高麗” in Japan, it is a safe bet it’s a Japanese abbreviation of Goguryeo (高句麗), the ancient Korean Kingdom thrived between the 1st century and 7th century. Why is a Korean name for Japanese places? It’s because the kingdom had several political crises that created many political asylum seekers emigrated to Japan. For Mt. Koma of Oiso, the written historical document recorded such thing happened after Goguryeo was overthrown by Chinese Tang Dynasty in 668. According to Mr. Koichi Nakajima of Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター, members of Goguryeo royal family flew from the Korean peninsula and settled here. As we’ve encountered Yokokuji-yato Tunnel Tomb 楊谷寺谷戸横穴群, and in the mythology for Mt. Hakone called Hakoneyama Engui 箱根山縁起 there are mentions about Goguryeo gods living in Oiso, the place may have been known by Korean nobles as some sort of spiritually desirable place … and some 1200 years later, a crown prince of their kingdom made Oiso his home (; my post on August 14, 2020) … The Koreans with advanced technology developed the area with iron manufacturing. It means, the forest of present day Komayama Park had a massive deforestation in the 7th century (; about steel making and deforestation, please see my post on January 15, 2016).

The ridgeway continues to the peak of Mt. Koma.

Before reaching to the top of Mt. Koma,
 we’ll meet this Y-crossing.
 Please cross the wooden bridge.
 For another road going down, I’ll mention it shortly.

To Mt. Koma

Then, in 717 famous monk Gyoki 行基 established Takaku Temple 高麗寺 around Mt. Koma, with Takaku Shrine. The temple grew bigger by the 10^th century having tens of wooden temple buildings for hundreds of monks in this tiny area. So, people deforested the area further. From then till Tokugawa Shogunate 徳川幕府 was established in 1600, the area of Komayama Park was destroyed so many times for construction, or for the medieval civil wars. By the early 17^th century, it was a bold mountain. Shogunate government decided to be a patron of the big temple-cum-Shintoism shrine, and aggressively afforested the seaside arid hill by black pines (Pinus thunbergii). Thanks to the strict control for forest management by Shogunate, Mr. Nagajima reported the vegetation of the area slowly recovered with pines from Shogun and oaks villagers around the hill planted for harvesting fuel logs. Those are the origin of present-day oaks here. At the time Oiso Town was becoming a celebrity town of the PMs, the forest was still of pines and deciduous broad-leaved oaks with lots of sunshine and humid winds from ocean reached to the forest floor. The place became the property of the prefecture who decided to keep the style of forest management as Shogun did. Though, the big temple at Mt. Koma was abolished and the buildings were destroyed. So, when we walk around the top of Mt. Koma now, we can find large afforested trees of 300-100 years old and a vacant space where once the temple structures stood.

The top of Mt. Koma where
 once the main temple building for Takaku Temple stood.

The steps of the temple remain.

To the Shrine from the remain of the Temple,
 it’s simply going down.

When Japan rushed into the World War II, many of the trees in Komayama Park were chopped as a part of resource mobilization for the total war. Yet, the Shogunate methodology of managing the forest of Komayama Park remained after the war till around the 1960. Then, petrol replaced the logs for energy and the forest was abandoned. Not much care was given. Around this time, massive die down occurred for 300 years old afforested pine trees due to pine wilt nematode. It gave chance for Machilus thunbergii, Castanopsis sieboldii, and Japanese camellia (Camellia japonica) to dominate the area with sasa bamboos covering the floor. The evergreens block the sunshine and sea breeze to penetrate in the forest. Now, remained or forgotten oaks have grown big enough to be a victim of Japanese oak wilt … So, it takes 400 years after the afforestation for the forest to be in the current form. The forest of Komayama Park is of old trees, but it certainly preserves the feeling of “man-made-ness.”

I think the feel here is a bit different from, say,
 the forests in Tanzawa mountains,
 in terms of “wildness.”

Still, it’s impressive forest, don’t you think?

Downtown Oiso is over there.

Although Takaku Temple was demolished, Takaku Shrine survived in the foot of Mt. Koma, which is the goal of our hiking in Komayama Park. The Shrine has two big annual festivals, whose photos and information are available in Oiso Municipal Museum 大磯郷土資料館 we visited. One festival is in summer with boats where fishermen ask good catch and prosperity for the town. Another is in spring for carrying a Mikoshi (portable shrine) from the Shrine to the top of Mt. Koma. From Takaku Shrine to the top of the mountain where once Takaku Temple situated, there are two routes. One is relatively smooth zig-zag trekking road, called On’na-zaka. Another, called Otoko-zaka, is definitely steeper and rocky way sometimes requiring rock-climbing. In spring festival, people carry Mikoshi to the hilltop intentionally using the steeper and more dangerous Otoko-zaka slope. The spring festival was originally for Takaku Temple, not for the Shrine, started in the early 17^th century. Now the route proceeds in the dark evergreen broadleaved forest, but for the first 300 years, Mikoshi should have carried in a brightly sun-lit forest of early spring. There must have been some reason people chose that slope …

Do you remember another road
 we met before arriving the top of Mt. Koma?
 It comes down here,
 behind the main building of Takaku Shrine.

Takaku Shrine

From Takaku Shrine, we can return to JR Oiso Station via National Route 1. If you like, please take small detours here and there along the present-day Route 1. Oiso Town preserves ancient Tokaido Street as commuter road for residential area where several 400 years’ old black pines still stand. Considering the damage pine wilt disease did for Komayama Park, it may be miraculous we still see such old pines just outside ordinary residences … The festivals for Takaku Shirine were cancelled this year due to COVID-19, and no one knows if they’ll be held next year. Who knows what the slow destruction of COVID-19 would do for our culture? But, even if a mountain became completely bold, it eventually has some vegetation on it ... I hope in hundreds of years’ time, we’ll have some recovery, just like Komayama Park.

Route #1 running in front of Takaku Shrine.

A detour along Route #1, which was
 once for the Post Town of Oiso for Tokaido 東海道.
 Now it’s completely a residential area
 with descendants of original black pines.

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/

War and Peace: a brief history of Doshi River, part 1 道志川

The blessing from Doshi River 道志川 to Yokohama comes from Water Source Forests in Doshi Village 道志村. 21.7km Doshi River is a tributary for Sagami River 相模川. It starts from the east of Yamabushi Pass 山伏峠 whose western side is Lake Yamanakako 山中湖, and joins with Sagami River at the point west of Lake Tsukui 津久井湖. Approx. 10km of the river from Sagami River runs through Sagamihara City of Kanagawa, and further upstream is in Doshi Village of Yamanashi Prefecture. Kanagawa side was called Lower Doshi 下道志, and the area along the river in Yamanashi was named Upper Doshi 上道志. Going Upper Doshi by public transportation is tricky. The nearest train station would be Tsurushi Station 都留市駅 of Fujikyu Line 富士急行 on the foot of Mt. Fuji 富士山. From there, an hour bus ride could bring us there twice daily (time table, here). From JR Shinjuku Station of Tokyo, it’s about 4 hour journey of 3200-4500 yen (Approx. USD40) for one-way. If we go there fromYokohama, we first go to JR Gotemba Station 御殿場駅 by whatever way, and from there take a 1.5 hour bus by Fujikyu Bus 富士急バス, changing the service once at Asahigaoka Bus Stop 旭が丘バス停 on the shore of Lake Yamanaka. The expected duration of your journey is about 4.5 to 5 hours with 3800-4200 yen (USD ditto!) for one way. So, normally, we go there by car which is cheaper and quicker. When we drive to Doshi River from wherever, we have to enter National Route 413, aka Doshi Road. It’s a venerable road existing since Japanese Neolithic age, connecting Mt. Fuji with Kanto Plane 関東平野. There is no other road linking up Upper Doshi with the outer world. When we proceed in Route 413 from Lake Tsukui to Upper Doshi, we are always surrounded by mountain forests that get deeper as we approach to Doshi Village of Yamanashi Prefecture. As a rule of thumb, rich forest can withhold rain as underground water, while they simultaneously play as soil retainers. If forests are gone, the underground water system would disappear sooner or later. The scenery of Doshi Road is a very good testimony that abundant water of Doshi River is sustained by the mass of trees. Why then could Doshi Village preserve rich forests for more than a century? Actually, they are keeping the forests for at least 400 years thanks early to Japanese civil war + geopolitics, and later to international relation. Let me start first from the civil war.

Aone Community 青根 of Lower Doshi.
The road below is the Route 413,
and the blue roofs further down on the foot of
right mountains (Doshi Mountains) are
for camping lodges near the riverbank of Doshi River.

Looking south on our way to Upper Doshi.
It’s actually the northern slopes of Tanzawa Mountains.

During the 15^th to 16^th centuries of the civil war, Japanese cut trees a lot. Slowly growing forests were useless for rapid destruction in wars. Moreover, deforestation did not stop at the end of the civil war. After the establishment of Tokugawa Shogunate 徳川幕府 in 1603, increasing population of peace time promoted slash-and-burn agriculture for food, which put enormous pressure on the forests. Obliteration of virgin forest that was started during the 7^th century in Kyoto and Nara, as Totman (1989) said, expanded all over Japan. Saving grace was, it was before the industrial revolution so that the speed of demolition did not create a collapse of environment. Rather, according to Suga, Okamoto and Ushimaru (2012), they were converting the archipelago from forests-dominating to grassland-covering with rich but different biodiversity. When a British diplomat, Sir Ernest Mason Satow, hiked around Japanese mountains in the late 19^th century, he encountered here and there lots of vast flower beds in grassland. Japanese farmers cut trees, converted some into farmlands, the others to grasslands for their livestock and materials for construction and daily tools (e.g. thatched roofs and tatami mats). But, villagers in Doshi Village did not have such ordinary rural life of Japan.

This is Niiharu’s farmland nested in the Niiharu Citizen Forest of Yokohama.
The senior forest volunteers for Niiharu told me
this part of the area has been cultivated for centuries,
and the background forests are new additions in the late 20^th century.
Before World War II, the majority of the scenery here was for agricultural field.
Hmmmmmmm.

A traditional house gate remaining in
Toriya community 鳥屋 near Lake Miyagase 宮ケ瀬湖.
For having this size of thatched roof,
we need rather substantial acreage of grassland.
The architecture also requires rethatching once in every 15-20 years
so that maintaining the place for construction material
(i.e. grass) for long-term was very important.
It means once deforested,
villagers had to maintain diligently the grassland
through regular mowing every fall to avoid reforestation.

Do you remember Tsukui Lake and Shiroyama Park 津久井城山公園 we’ve visited last fall? A booklet provided by the Park Office (in Japanese, downloadable from here) said Shiroyama Hill was a bald mountain when it was a fortress. The place was a battle ground, where trees were simply obstruction for the business. Samurais must have cut vegetation vigorously. From Shiroyama Park to Aoyama Settling Basin 青山沈殿池 on Doshi River, it’s only 6K. From Mt. Fuji and Kofu City 甲府市, the routes along Sagami River and Doshi River were important passage to Kanto Plane for millennia. Not for nothing National Route 20, aka Koshu-kaido Route 甲州街道 and Chuo Express Way 中央高速 run through the area. Lots of warlords from Central Japan wanted to control the territory of Doshi Village and the northern Kanagawa Prefecture. Deforestation was inevitable. However, after conquering Tsukui Castle on Shiroyama Hill in 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康, the founder of Edo Shogunate, grabbed the land and ordered to afforest the entire area massively in order to create a buffer zone, in case another enemy approached to Edo (Tokyo) from the west. Later, this defense policy was transformed to industrial policy of timber and fuel (i.e., charcoal) production whose main customer was his city, Edo. Almost entire forests of Tama Region of Tokyo, and Tanzawa / Hakone of Kanagawa were the property of Shogunate Government from 1590 till 1868. There, cutting trees without governmental permission was considered as high treason with death penalty.

Afforested cypresses in Shiroyama Hill.
They were planted in the middle of the 19^th century
by a local mandarin, Egawa Tarozaemon Hidetatsu 江川太郎左衛門秀龍.
The Shogunate Government must have planned
to harvest them in hundreds years later as construction materials.
Now they are registered historical monuments for Kanagawa Prefecture.

Kobotoke Pass 小仏峠 on the former Koshu-kaido Route.
There are only ruins in the 21^st century,
but until about 150 years ago
there was a checkpoint of Shogunate Government,
stopping invaders to Edo (Tokyo) from the west.

Early this month, we’ve been to Lake Tanzawa 丹沢湖 to meet with a Treasure Tree 箒杉, haven’t we? The people lived in the region of Lake Tanzawa was the assigned guardian of the forests of Treasure Trees for Shogun. Villagers of Doshi also protected the afforested mountain for Edo. They could not cut trees for rice paddies or farmlands as ordinary farmers did elsewhere in Japan. Instead, they engaged in forestry for Edo government. They were also given several permissions, such as holding arms to fish in the river, or to hunt deer and the other wild animals. That was a real privilege where disarmament among non-worriers was the foundation of the Shogunate politics. The life would have been not bad in Doshi Village. There is a book, “Oral Record of Traditional Meal in Kanagawa Prefecture 聞き書 神奈川の食事 日本の食生活全集（14）” published in 1992. There, the grannies lived near present-day Lake Tanzawa said even in the late 19^th century their community had “traditional” regular meal with deer steak and freshly BBQed fishes. That’s something if we consider the rest of the nation of that time had mainly vegetarian diet, not by choice but due to subsistence farming. I imagine villagers of Doshi enjoyed similar life back then. Doshi Village, 14km long and narrow human settlement along the river in deep mountains, has several temples holding elaborate Buddha statues dating back to Shogunate Period, or Shintoism shrines that preside over lively traditional seasonal festivals, including amateur Kabuki theatre (Maekawa 2007). Starving people could not have such things, couldn’t they? When Ernest M. Satow visited Doshi Village in January 1872, the rush forests around Doshi River were frozen-green with nice houses dotted here and there with open-air private spa to enjoy relaxation under moonlight. Though, the life style in Doshi changed dramatically with the Port of Yokohama.

The present-day forests near Lake Tanzawa,
which was once owned by Shogun.

“Treasure Tree” in Lake Tanzawa Area.

Water source forests in Doshi Village last fall.
The greenery is thanks to
the traditional guardian of the trees in the Village.

According to Izumi (2004), when Shogunate Government collapsed and Meiji Restoration Government 明治維新政府 took over, the entire forests owned by the previous government became the property of the Emperor 御領林. Shogunate had lots of forests all over Japan, and the Government of Emperor cashed in quite many of them during the 19^th century, by selling them to their supporters (with preferential price, of course). Meanwhile, at the time of societal chaos during 1868-1890, people of Doshi who lost the Shogun as the main client of their forestry tried to do the same as the rest of Japan: cutting trees to expand their field for food production to avoid starvation. On the other hand, when the Meiji Government was mulling over the treatment of their newly inherited “Treasure Trees,” Yokohama’s water problem became large. The new government took over not only the land of Shogun, but also one-sided treaties with Europeans and Americans. The deal was rapidly vacuuming Japanese silver to the coffers of imperialists in London or else, which caused hyperinflation in Japan. In addition, Japanese knew rather well similar agreements for Qing Dynasty after the Opium War were devastating the glory of China. The new government had to deal with this international issue ASAP. Sitting at the negotiation table with the imperialists as “equal” was the first thing to do. But, Yokohama where the foreigners stayed had horrible water often with viruses of epidemics. “Oh, how barbarous!” was the last evaluation Meiji Government wanted to receive during the complicated diplomacy. They hired British Engineer Colonel Palmer and built for Yokohama one of the most technically advanced waterworks of the world, earlier than for Hamburg in Germany. Furthermore, the government needed the forest guaranteeing high quality water for the international city and port. It happened to be one of the water intake facilities Palmer suggested was located in the middle of Emperor’s forests that traditionally engaged in governmental forestry. No land negotiation was necessary to secure the water source forests. Doshi was an easy place for the mandarins in Tokyo. The people in Doshi were chosen again to serve, this time, for Yokohama. They were imposed new restrictions over their life by Tokyo, and Yokohama.

The international port of Yokohama was not built in one day,
or alone, …

but with the help of these plants.

* Here is the list of books that gave me the info for this post.

Conrad D. Totman. The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial Japan. University of California Press, 1989. ISBN-10: 0520063120, ISBN-13: 978-0520063129.

Takeshi Suka 須賀 丈; Atsushi Ushimaru丑丸 敦史; Toru Okamoto 岡本 透. Grassland and Japanese: ten thousand years’ journey through the grassland of Japanese Archipelago 草地と日本人―日本列島草原1万年の旅. Tsukij-Shokan 築地書館, 2012. ISBN-10: 4806714348, ISBN-13: 978-4806714347.

Ernest Mason Satow. A Handbook for Travellers in Central and Northern Japan: Being a Guide to Tokio, Kioto, Ozaka, and Other Cities; The Most Interesting Parts of the Main Island Between Kobe and Awomori, with Ascents of the Principal Mountains, and Descriptions of Temples. Forgotten Books, 2017. ISBN-10: 0282568409, ISBN-13: 978-0282568405.

The Editorial Committee for Recording Japanese Regional Diets, Kanagawa Chapter 日本の食生活全集神奈川編集委員会. Oral Record of Traditional Meal in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japanese Regional Diets volume 14 聞き書 神奈川の食事 日本の食生活全集. Rural Culture Association Japan 農山漁村文化協会, 1992. ISBN-10: 4540920022, ISBN-13: 978-4540920028.

Seiji Maekawa 前川 清治. The Story of Doshi 22km: a village of greenery, clear stream, and history 道志七里物語―緑と清流と歴史の郷. Yamanashi Nichinichi Shimbun 山梨日日新聞社, 2006. ISBN-10: 4897106141, ISBN-13: 978-4897106144.

Keiko Izumi 泉 桂子. The Origin of Modern Water Resource Conservation Forests: an ecological history of forests and cities 近代水源林の誕生とその軌跡―森林(もり)と都市の環境史. University of Tokyo Press 東京大学出版会, 2004. ISBN-10: 4130760262, ISBN-13: 978-4130760263.

In case you need a contact in Doshi Village, the address of their village office is

Doshi Village Office 道志村役場

6181-1 Doshi Village, Minamitsuru-gun, Yamanashi, 402-0209

〒402-0209 山梨県南都留郡道志村6181-1

Phone: 0554-52-2111

FAX: 0554-52-2572

http://www.vill.doshi.lg.jp/