Tsurui Village
Masayuki Oishi

In the mind of village mayor Oishi who was born and raised in this village, the dairy farming landscape which he has been familiar since his childhood keeps living as the original landscape.

Wonderfulness of dairy farming landscape. This is the happiest village in Japan.

Tsurui-mura is “the village where cranes are” as the village's name suggests. They worked on the protection of endangered tancho cranes and it was designated as special national treasure in 1952, and now over 1000 cranes are confirmed. However, due to the increase in population, new problems such as damage to agriculture and preservation of wetlands as a habitat occurred and remain to be solved.
The key industry of Tsurui-mura is dairy and livestock farming leading the nation in the production of raw milk exceeding 60,000 tons per year. This village has been working on dairy farming since the end of the war, our forerunners improved the dairy farming techniques through overseas training in the Showa 30' and built a foundation for the current development of dairy farming.
In the Milk Quality Contest, milk of Tsurui-mura won Japan's top prize and we have worked on improving milk quality for years and manufacturing of processed products such as cheeze. In the 6th All Japan Natural Cheese Contest, it has also won the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Prize and we will continue to work on the development of high-quality milk and various processed products. Also, although it can not be sold yet, we have started manufacturing wine using mountain grapes and we would like to make it new specialty products of Tsurui-mura in the future.
Regarding the future development of villages, while working on dairy farming as a key industry, it is important to utilize various regional resources and work on tourism and other agriculture as well.
Last year, we marked the 80th anniversary of after the opening of Tsurui-mura, and we have advanced to the next stage. We would like to continue developing a new village so that we can leave the present beautiful village Tsurui to the children in the future.
We would like to continue developing a new village so that Tsurui-mura will continue to be a region can be proud to the next generation.

Interviewed in January, 2018
Writer : Hideko Takahashi / Photographer : Hiroyuki Tamura