Kasamatsu, Gifu

The Kiso River runs close here — close enough that the town's entire history bends toward it. Kasamatsu sits on the right bank of the Kiso in the Nōbi Plain, a low-lying strip of land that flooded repeatedly across the centuries, reshaping boundaries and erasing farmland each time the river rose. That vulnerability never stopped the place from mattering: during the Edo period, the shogunate established the Kasamatsu Jinya here as a direct administrative post, and in the early Meiji era, the Gifu Prefectural Office briefly stood on the same ground. The site of the Kasamatsu Jinya still exists, a quiet patch of civic memory tucked into an otherwise ordinary town.

The festivals that survive here have a particular weight. At Hachiman Shrine and Musubi Shrine, the Yaккo Gyōretsu procession is performed each spring as an offering — a formal parade with deep Edo-period roots. At Kawano Enjōji, a Jōdo Shinshū temple, the Bashō Odori is preserved as a designated intangible folk cultural property of the prefecture. These are not tourist reconstructions; they are still offered to their original recipients.

For a different register, Blueriver Café is where the Horseshoe Burger originated — a local specialty that reflects the town's long association with horses and horse culture. Nearby, the Naratsu embankment is known for its cherry trees, and Kasamatsu Minato Park opens to the riverbank where the Kawa Matsuri is held. The river that once threatened everything is now the town's gathering place.