Urlandschaft of the North Back

Wilderness and rewilding?

Teshikaga is a town developed by hot springs. It is the gateway to Akan-Mashū National Park, which has two caldera lakes, Lake Kussharo and Lake Mashū. The view of Lake Kussharo from Bihoro Pass was as beautiful as its reputation. What impressed me even more was the Akan wilderness below. The endless dark green surrounding the lake changes to a short-furred yellow-green carpet at a certain altitude. In winter, this area is covered with pure white snow. The contrast between the deep green, white and the color of the sky on the frozen surface of the lake is so beautiful, I imagined.

It is a 30-minute drive from the lake to the town of Teshikaga. As you approach the center of the town, gas stations and discount stores gradually appear, and after a while you come to a large intersection.

This area is the periphery of the town of Teshikaga, a newly built residential area after the war. After descending a long hill and entering the main street, a shopping street appears. Although it is old, many stores are still in business, reminding us of the bustle of the past. As I got off the car, a strong smell of sulfur hit my nose, reminding me once again that Teshikaga is a hot spring resort town.

Teshikaga is located on the bottom of a valley surrounded by mountains on all sides. Walking through the town, you will feel very close to the presence of plants. One of the reasons for this is that the mountains are very close to the town, surrounding it like a wall. Another reason is the growth of plants in the town. For example, gardens were created at the foot of the high-rise hot spring resorts, but many of them have closed down, and as a result, the plants in the gardens have grown beyond the scale and boundaries of the street space.

Iō-zan Mountain and hot spring resort: a base for travel to the backcountry

The name “Teshikaga” is composed of the Ainu words “teshika” meaning “bedrock” and “ga” meaning “top”. The name is said to have come from the fact that the bedrock is so hard that nets cannot be set to catch fish. Japanese people settled on the banks of the Kushiro River, where there had originally been an Ainu settlement, and formed a town after the Meiji period. Records from the Meiji period show that Ainu also lived in the area, although in smaller numbers.

Teshikaga, which began operating hot springs in 1883, grew as a center for sulfur mining and the construction of the Kushiro Railway during the same period, and became a major transportation hub. After sulfur mining was discontinued in 1896 due to resource depletion, Teshikaga developed into a hot spring resort that attracted many tourists in parallel with the development of vacation homes and tourism in the lakeside area in the northern part of the town. Teshikaga was a base town for tourists who traveled to the interior of Kushiro.

Currently, the main industries are agriculture, mainly dairy farming, forestry, and tourism. The town, the center of local government administration, has a railroad station and educational institutions up to high school. Although there are no signs of the bustle of the high-growth period, the town has a shopping and restaurant district, convenience stores, a large drugstore, a medical clinic, facilities for the elderly, and parks, and can be said to have a high quality of life.

Grid embedded in the valley

Most of the town of Teshikaga is formed by a grid-like town layout. Teshikaga Shrine is located on the southwestern plateau with a steep slope, and the core of the town is a shopping street on both banks of the Kushiro River, extending in a northwesterly direction along a street orthogonal to the approach in front of the shrine. The shopping street turns toward the station at the gate of Kenshoji Temple, which is also on the plateau, and then turns several times to head toward Shibecha.

A strip-shaped grid is laid out around the main street, which is divided into public facilities and residences, starting from the side of the plateau where the shrine is located. Only the two areas on the inner bay of the river are not divided into a grid, creating a space that is different from the others as a hot spring resort. The two areas were considered unsuitable for residential use due to frequent flooding, but the boundary and otherworldliness of the waterfront area had a positive effect on the atmosphere of the hot springs resort. On the other hand, the residential areas on the northern bank of the Kushiro River and on the plateau were developed after World War II. Before that, most of the land was farmland, with only a few houses lining the streets.

The residential areas, divided into strips, were gradually filled in during the postwar economic growth period, and in the 1970s, low-rise detached houses and a series of houses with ample parking lots and yards created a relaxing streetscape. Today, many of the lots are vacant and have been converted to parking lots or meadows, but residential areas with wide streets and yards and low buildings offer views of radio towers, elementary school cupolas, and high-rise hotels a short distance away. These small landmarks create a collective impression of the city.

A sense of enclosure created by the vista

The edge of the forests is more impressive to pedestrians when they are present and seem to be approaching in front of them on every street and in every direction. In this town, where the town is laid out in a grid pattern in a valley surrounded by wilderness, most streets have a view of the forest beyond the line of sight. The combination of straight streets and trees standing taller than the surrounding buildings at the back of the streets causes a cognitive effect as if the space is compressed, making this street space seem shorter than it actually is. In addition, the undulations of the streets, which are laid out in a grid pattern regardless of the slope, are highly variable, and this is thought to further increase the sense of distance from the trees that rise up beyond the line of sight.

This kind of spatial experience creates a sense of proximity to the wildness that one feels when walking through this town. By constantly feeling the wildness close to one’s own body, one feels as if one is surrounded by wilderness even while in the town. It is also a reminder that the town of Teshikaga is embedded in the wilderness as a foreign object. There is a tension between the built environment and the natural environment that cannot be felt in a city on the plains, where the forests have been cleared and modified over a long period of time to make them more habitable. And it is different from intimacy.

“Brutality garden”

As is common in many low-density towns, residents love plants, and many houses have gardens with carefully pruned trees and flowers, and pretty planters filled with seasonal flowers are placed here and there. They are not enclosed by walls, but overflow into the street, blurring the boundaries of the site and decorating the exterior space. This love for plants creates a gentle and serene impression of the town as a whole. However, Teshikaga has a “brutal” landscape that goes beyond this.

As you approach the edge of the town grid, that is, as you approach the edge of the forest, the scenery changes drastically, becoming even more powerful and vital. For example, the precincts of the Teshikaga Shrine, located at the very edge of the town, are a very dense virgin forest compared to other shrines in the area. Such an environment also affects the surroundings. The distance between the plants and the houses built on the slope at the edge of the mountain is close enough that they are just barely in equilibrium but are about to be surrounded by the plants. The lotus growing at the foot of the vacant lot create a beautiful contrast to the white painted houses. The tension between plants and people can be seen in the juxtaposition of several dwellings nestled between the thick underbrush and lush trees, which make it difficult to step into. I would like to call this tension-filled exterior space a “brutality garden”.

In this way, plants have entered the human realm in various gradations in Teshikaga. The forests that always appear in front of us may be bringing the residents closer to the plants.

As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, there are trees of various sizes in various places inside the two bends of the Kushiro River, which has been developed as a hot spring resort area. Today, as the tourism industry has lost its vigor and the hot spring resort itself has deteriorated, plants are encroaching on the space planned by human beings. However, they are not to the extent of covering huge buildings or wide roads, but rather they are creating a picturesque landscape that is full of vitality and yet balanced. A “brutality garden” is a state in which people are accepting the behavior of plants that are trying to reclaim their space. As I was thinking about this, a fox walked toward me from somewhere along the middle of the road, where no cars were passing, with a self-satisfied look on its face. All of these landscapes make up the atmosphere of the small town of Teshikaga, which was created by clearing a wilderness and is surrounded by the nature of the wilderness that still remains.

A tale of a riverside town

Across the Kushiro River from the hot spring resort area, there is a wild virgin forest lying on the other side of the river. The lush vegetation along the banks of the Tobetsu River, which runs through the southern part of the town, reminds us of the pre-modern lifestyle of the Ainu people who lived in the rich natural environment of Teshikaga and along the banks of its clear waters. I visited during the Ezo rainy season, when the flow was so high that I felt I was in danger. It is not difficult to imagine that before the current flood control works, the two rivers flooded many times and caused a lot of damage. At the same time, however, these rivers have provided food, resources for daily life, and personal safety. The banks of the Kushiro River, in particular, have been transformed into hot spring resorts, taking advantage of the boundary and otherworldliness of the riverside and its scenic beauty. The hot springs and the surrounding entertainment area have become synonymous with the town, healing the minds and bodies of travelers, while also being a way of life for the local residents.

With the decline of the tourism industry in Japan, many inns have closed their doors, and the hot springs resort has lost the vitality that it had in its heyday. On the other hand, the attractive street space where plants grow in exuberance and a delicate balance is maintained between humans and plants is being redeveloped to open up the closed waterside space of the hot spring resort to the people of the town. The buildings have been removed, and the large site has been transformed into a water park where children can safely play, along with an updated flood control system. Teshikaga is now being transformed into a town that is livable for young and old, and welcoming to visitors, in balance with its rich natural environment.

June 28, 2022