Tono Kojin Shrine
About the Tono Kojin Shrine Camera
This camera looks at Kojin Shrine in Tono, Iwate — a small thatched shrine standing by itself in the middle of the rice fields, with the mountains of the Kitakami range behind it.
Tono is inseparable from the Tono Monogatari, the 1910 collection of local legends compiled by Kunio Yanagita, which effectively founded Japanese folklore studies. Kappa, zashiki-warashi and the mountain deities recorded in that book are still part of how the town presents itself, and the landscape around this shrine is the landscape those stories came from.
The appeal here is the agricultural year rather than any event. Flooded paddies mirroring the sky in late spring, deep green through summer, gold before the harvest, and snow cover through a long Tohoku winter — the same frame looks entirely different in each.
Highlights & Nearby
- •Watch for: the thatched shrine, the rice fields through the farming year, the Kitakami mountains
- •Nearby: Tono city, Denshoen, Kappabuchi, the Kitakami range
- •Note: the paddies change the whole view by season — flooded in spring, gold before harvest, snow in winter
