Ogawa

Ogawa-mura, Shinshu region, the center of the main island of Japan, which is also called “navel”. This village with a population of about 2,600 located in the northern part of Nagano prefecture, and between Nagano city and Hakuba city is also known as 'Oyaki-no-sato'. The local food of Shinshu region (Nagano prefecture),Oyaki, which is a baked flour bun filled with eggplants, Nozawana greens, and others is also “a main actor” that greatly contributes to revitalization of the village, women's work opportunity and entrepreneurship.

On a sunny day, you can overlook magnificent Northern Japan Alps mountain ranges from everywhere in the village, and Japan's good old satoyama landscape spreads at the foot of the mountains. The idyllic landscape as though just stepped out of the picture book invites people who visited here to calm, feel relaxed, and somehow nostalgic “spiritual home”. It was 2009 that they joined the Union of “the most beautiful villages in Japan”. Satoyama landscape overlooking the Northern Japan Alps which was also selected as one of “the 100 best satoyama villages in Japan”, and food culture of Oyaki etc has been registered as regional resources.
Ogawa-mura where 70% of the village's land area is the mountain forests, and people lived in mountainous areas at the altitude of 500 to 1000m. Due to the locational conditions that there is no flat land suitable for rice growing, people cleared small slope area and made the wheat field there. That is the trigger of the origin of Oyaki culture. In the 30s of Showa period when the mountains including the peaks were once the fields, people walked to the fields over the mountain wearing a backpack called shoiko on their back and worked hard to grow soybean and wheat there. In the early summer, the appearance that ears of wheat glow gold and shake in the wind is still one of the beautiful scenes of the village.
“Ogawa-no-sho” is the pioneering existence of the economic development projects in the village through Oyaki. Thirty years ago, it was founded to commercialize Oyaki , the local food of Shinshu region, as 'taste of home'. In the face of regional issues such as rapid declining population, aging population, depopulation, etc., they launched with a vision of “revitalization” and “new village development”. Initially there was resistance that “That is not a feast to serve to anybody”, but under the concept of “creating a place where women and elderly people can work, adding value to local agricultural products”, they promoted vigorously manufacturing, processing, domestic and overseas sales. Today, Oyaki has grown to soul food that represents Japan including the village.

Interviewed in October, 2018