After passing through the tunnel on the snow country border, a V-shaped valley appeared.[전승훈의 아트로드]

Low birth rate and aging population are not just a problem in our country. In Japan, there are many towns that are facing serious population decline and extinction. One of them is Niigata Prefecture, a representative snowfall area in Japan. In the middle of winter, snow piles up to 2-3 meters, and with the difficult farming work, young people leave for the city. However, these days, this place is gaining attention as a stylish landscape that is most popular among Japanese people in their 30s. How has the ‘Echigo-Tsumari Art Festival’, which started 20 years ago in the mountains, lakes, fields, and rice paddy ridges, changed this quiet rural area?

● Snow Country’s Great Land Art Festival

“As we came out of the long tunnel at the border, we arrived in a snowy land. The bottom of the night became white.”

This is the first line of the novel “Snow Country” by Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. The “border” in “The Long Tunnel of the Border” generally refers to the border between countries, but in Japan it is also used to mean the border between regions. The setting of Snow Country is Niigata Prefecture.

From Tokyo, it takes 1 hour and 20 minutes by Shinkansen. After passing through a long tunnel in the mountains, you arrive in Niigata Prefecture. Facing the east coast of Korea, Niigata Prefecture is a place where moist clouds coming from the Sea of ​​Japan are blocked by the high Echigo Mountains on the opposite side, causing a huge amount of heavy snowfall.

Kiyotsu Gorge, Tokamachi, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. When standing on the observation deck, the blue sky and the V-shaped gorge are reflected like decals in a shallow puddle. Niigata=Reporter Jeon Seung-hoon [email protected]

However, in Niigata Prefecture, which I visited in midsummer, there was another “border tunnel” attracting tourists. The “Tunnel of Light” in Kiyotsu-kyo, Tokamachi City. After walking through a 750m dark tunnel for 30 minutes, a V-shaped gorge appeared. The bottom of the tunnel, where rapid water flowed between the columnar jointed rocks, sparkled. The scenery of the gorge and people were reflected like decals in a shallow puddle on the floor of the “Panorama Station,” an observation deck at the end of the tunnel. Should I say, “After exiting the long border tunnel, a V-shaped gorge photo spread out in my life”? The Kiyotsu-kyo Tunnel, which was built in 1996, was reborn as a work of art for the “Echigo-Tsumari Art Festival” in the 2000s, and has emerged as a famous Niigata spot where nature and art come together.

Niigata Prefecture has long been known as the land of the three whites, famous for its “white snow, white rice, and clear sake.” Japan’s famous rice, Koshihikari, is a specialty of Niigata Prefecture. Because the rice is so delicious, the three major traditional sakes of Japan, Kubota, Koshino Kanbai, and Hakkaisan, all have their roots here, and there are over 100 breweries.

Premium rice is also grown in terraced rice fields in the mountains. In the Hoshitoge terraced rice fields in Tokamachi, the rice fields spread out on the slopes like fish scales. Niigata rice, which grows by drinking melted snow in the mountains, is famous for its pearly white color and deep flavor. Photographers flock to the terraced rice fields in the spring to capture the sea of ​​clouds at dawn when they are full of water.

Terraced rice fields at Hoshitoge in Niigata, where snowmelt water replenishes rice. Courtesy of Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO).

However, the hard farm work in the mountains caused young people to leave for the city. Only the elderly remained in the villages, and the number of closed schools increased due to the population decline. In 2000, six small cities in the Echigo-Tsumari region (760㎢) started a project to revitalize the declining villages. It was the ‘Echigo-Tsumari Land Art Festival’ with the participation of world-renowned artists such as James Turrell and Yayoi Kusama. 163,000 people flocked to see modern art exhibited on rice paddies and lakesides the first time, and the number exceeded 500,000 in 2015, the sixth time. The budget for the first event was 380 million yen. However, the economic effect was 12.8 billion yen. Since then, about 200 works have been exhibited every year, and the event, held as a triennale once every three years, has continued for over 20 years.

This year, the Earth Art Festival is being held for a total of 87 days from the 13th of last month to the 10th of November. I was surprised to see the mountain village exhibition hall, which I visited with the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), filled with young visitors in their 20s and 30s. At the center of it all is an art museum that has been repurposed from a closed school. The “Picture Book and Fruit Museum” in Tokamachi features a work titled “Schools Never Close” featuring three students who attended the school until it closed in 2005. Artist Seizo Tashima humorously recreated students, teachers, monsters, and ghosts by painting driftwood and fruit collected from the Izu Peninsula and the Sea of ​​Japan.

The installation ‘Schools Never Close’ at the Picture Book and Tree Fruit Museum.

In the former Higashikawa Elementary School in the Matsunoyama area, there is a French artist’s work titled “The Last Classroom.” Walking through the dark hallways where you can hear the sound of a heartbeat, you get an eerie feeling, but the audience enjoys a thrilling experience in a different space.

A parachute artwork displayed at the Warehouse Art Museum (SOKO), which was remodeled from a school gymnasium.

‘Nobutai’ in Matsudai is the ‘Snow Country Agricultural Culture Center’ designed by Dutch architect group MVRDV. It is a field museum with about 40 works of art scattered over a 2km mountain.

Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Blooming Tsumari’ on display at the Nobutai Snow Country Agricultural Culture Center.

Here, Yayoi Kusama’s “Blooming Tsumari” attracts visitors, and the sculpture of farmers planting, weeding, and harvesting rice seedlings in terraced rice fields according to season is the symbolic work of the Land Art Festival.

Terraced rice field installation at Nobutai Snow Country Culture Center.

Nakago Green Park is a healing space where you can heal your mind by communing with nature on a wide lawn. There is also a work of art where when sunlight shines, the mirror in the water acts as a prism, creating a rainbow on the ceiling.

A sunlight-reflecting rainbow artwork displayed at Nakago Green Park.

‘Echigo-Tsumari Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art (MonET)’ is structured so that the water of the central pool perfectly reflects the building, and the transparent water balloon artwork at the entrance shows the color of the sky even more clearly.

A transparent water balloon work from the Echigo-Tsumari Satoyama Museum of Modern Art.

On the shallow hill of Tokamachi is the ‘Bijinrim (美人林, Bijinbayashi)’. The forest of beech trees, which are about 100 years old, is beautiful and is visited by 100,000 people every year. In the 1920s, all the beech trees were cut down to make charcoal, and the mountain became bare, but the forest was naturally restored by the pond. The beech forest, with its thick trunks and slender beech trees, is a symbol of nature and village regeneration.

‘Miinrim’ is a beautiful forest of beech trees reflected in a pond.

The Earth Art Festival also offers accommodations in various places. ‘Ryugon’ is a traditional Edo-period folk house that has been renovated into a hot spring inn. In addition to the hot springs, the facility where you can experience the culture of the heavy snowfall zone called ‘Romantic Yukiguni (雪國)’ stands out. In the lobby, there is a space where you can have tea and chat in front of a charcoal fire, and on the wall hangs a snowman and a snowshoe used when it snows. The chopstick rest in the shape of a white snowman that is served at the ‘Snow Country Morning’ breakfast is very cute.

A room with a hot spring at the traditional ryokan ‘Ryugon’.

‘Ryugon’ is a ryokan built by remodeling a traditional Japanese house.

●Kusatsu Onsen ‘Yumomi (water massage)’ performance

Kusatsu Onsen in Gunma Prefecture, a town next to Niigata, is considered one of the three most famous hot springs in Japan, along with Gero Onsen in Gifu Prefecture and Arima Onsen in Hyogo Prefecture. Kusatsu Onsen, located at an altitude of 1,200 meters, produces more than 32,300 liters of hot water per minute. This is equivalent to the amount of hot spring water that gushes out every day, equivalent to about 230,000 drums.

The moment you enter the village, the smell of sulfur vibrates and smoke rises. In the middle of the village, there is a hot spring called ‘Yubatake’, which means hot spring field. It is a strong acidic (pH 2.05) hot spring and is known to be excellent for hot spring therapy such as neuralgia and fatigue recovery. However, since the average temperature of the source water is 70℃, the medicinal effect decreases when cooled by mixing it with cold water, so a method of naturally cooling the hot spring water has been developed since the Edo period.

A wooden water channel shaped like a terraced rice field at Yubatake in Kusatsu Onsen Village, Gunma Prefecture.

First of all, in the center of the village, there is a long wooden water channel made of a wooden barrel, like a terraced rice field. The hot spring water flows down the water channel in layers and is naturally cooled. In order to cool the water to around 40℃, which is good for bathing, each hot spring uses a 30cm wide and 180cm long red pine plank like rowing a boat to cool it, which is called “yumomi (hot spring water massage)”. At “Netsunoyu” in front of Yubadake, you can see a yumomi performance where people sing a work song called “Choi na~ Choi na~” that has been going on for 50 years. Most of the performances are by women, but twice a month, players from “The Spa Kusatsu Gunma”, a J2 League team, perform a yumomi performance to promote the hot spring town soccer team. “I started performing Yumomi with my mother-in-law,” said resident Rie Sakata. “There is a resident who has been performing for 23 years.”

A ‘Yumomi (water massage)’ performance to cool down the hot spring water in Kusatsu Onsen Village, Gunma Prefecture.

Reporter Jeon Seung-hoon [email protected]

2024-08-17 22:26:49