By Rafe Calder
The valley is cut into mountains that reach 1,500 metres, and it takes a lot of snow. The houses are built for it. That is the short version, and the sources spend most of their length on how.
Where it is
UNESCO lists the Historic Villages of Shirakawa-gō and Gokayama as a serial property inscribed in 1995 under cultural criteria (iv) and (v), with a property area of 68 hectares. Three villages make up the listing: Ogimachi in the Shirakawa-gō region, and Ainokura and Suganuma in Gokayama. They lie along the Shō river in Gifu and Toyama prefectures, in the Chūbu region. UNESCO says the area was “cut off from the rest of the world for a long period of time”. Wikipedia adds that the isolation kept outside contact limited until around the 1950s.
The roof
The style is called gasshō-zukuri, and the usual translation is hands joined in prayer. Wikipedia describes a steep thatched roof that sheds heavy snow and is structurally strong. UNESCO, using different words, calls the houses large farmhouses with steeply pitched thatched roofs and “highly rational structural systems”. The sources give no roof angle in degrees, so we give none.
What the roof covered
Wikipedia says the houses rise three to four storeys under low eaves. The upper floors were used for rearing silkworms. Spaces below the ground floor were used to produce nitre, an ingredient of gunpowder. The same article traces silkworm farming in the area to the 16th century, says it became a side industry in the late 17th century, and says it thrived until the 1970s apart from a break in the Second World War before disappearing. UNESCO notes that residents farmed mulberry trees and raised silkworms.
Three villages, three sizes
Wikipedia gives household counts from around August 1994, so these are old figures. Ogimachi had 152 households and 634 residents, at about 500 metres of altitude, with 59 gasshō-style farmhouses among its 117 historic buildings. Ainokura, at about 400 metres, had 27 households and 90 residents and 23 gasshō-style farmhouses, the oldest from the late 17th century. Suganuma, at about 330 metres, had 8 households and 40 residents and nine gasshō-style houses, the last built in 1926.
Rethatching as a village job
Wikipedia describes a system called yui, unpaid joint labour for rethatching, carried out every 30 to 40 years. Preparation starts at least three years ahead and the work needs 200 to 300 workers a day. Men work on the roof and women prepare meals and gifts. Usually one side of a roof is finished in two days. UNESCO makes a related point in its own terms: owners manage individual buildings, and residents traditionally carry out repairs together, with traditional materials and techniques.
Houses that were moved
A Japan travel guide says many farmhouses were moved to Ogimachi for preservation after the Miboro Dam was built over the Shō river in the 1960s and flooded local villages. It says a folk park, the Gasshō-zukuri Minka-en, holds 25 relocated gasshō buildings, set up in the late 1960s. The guide also names the Wada house as the village’s largest gasshō house, once belonging to a wealthy family of silk traders. The national tourism organisation’s page calls it the oldest and largest in the village and says the family has lived there for over 200 years.
Fire
UNESCO names fire as a major hazard. All three village zones have fire-extinguishing systems, and residents are organised into fire-fighting squads. Wikipedia says the same.
Dates in order
- Eleventh century: UNESCO says the villages have existed since then.
- 16th century: silkworm farming traced to this period, according to Wikipedia.
- 1578: date given for the Murakami farmhouse in Kaminashi, according to a travel guide.
- Late 17th century: oldest gasshō farmhouse in Ainokura, according to Wikipedia.
- 1926: last gasshō house built in Suganuma, according to Wikipedia.
- 1950: Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, under which each village is an Important Preservation District, according to UNESCO.
- 1960s: the Miboro Dam and the move of farmhouses, according to a travel guide.
- 1995: World Heritage inscription.
Side by side
Wikipedia’s infobox gives the buffer zone as 58,873.1 hectares, and UNESCO gives the same figure. Wikipedia’s body text gives a Buffer Zone II of 545.38 square kilometres, which is a different measure, and we leave the two as they stand. On the Wada house, one guide says it is the largest, and the tourism page says oldest and largest; we report both. Our reading: the shared feature across the sources is cooperation. Repairs, roofs and fire-fighting are all described as jobs for the whole village.
What kind of sources these are
UNESCO is the heritage body that made the listing. Wikipedia is an open encyclopaedia, and its household counts are from 1994. The Japan travel guide is a commercial guide website, and the national tourism organisation page is promotional by nature.
What we left out
We left out the Wikipedia estimate of re-roofing costs, which carries a citation-needed tag. We left out bus times, access details and festival dates, because the sources vary and none is from a transport operator. We left out any claim about building without nails, which none of our sources states, and any account of winter lighting, for which we found no dates.
Roam first. Shop later.