Hidaka, Saitama

Trains from Ikebukuro reach Kōma Station in under an hour, and yet the ground shifts noticeably once you step off — the Kantō plain flattening to the east, low wooded hills rising to the west toward the Okumuzasa highlands. Hidaka sits at this seam, a city shaped by postwar housing development but underlaid by something considerably older.

The name Kōma is not incidental. It traces back to Kōmakun, the ancient administrative district established to settle migrants from the Korean kingdom of Koguryō, and Kōma-jinja — founded in the early eighth century and dedicated to the Koguryō prince Jakko — still stands here, its precincts quietly marking that long passage of people and culture across the sea. Nearby, the Kōmamura Stone Age Dwelling Site preserves the earliest identified pit-dwelling remains of the Jōmon period in Saitama Prefecture, now a nationally designated historic site. The Kōma-gō Kominka, a traditional farmhouse on the plateau, holds the domestic scale of an older agricultural life. These places are not curated as a heritage trail; they simply occupy the same landscape as the golf courses and factory roads.

Along National Route 299, industrial facilities — cement plants, food manufacturers — mark the practical economy of the area. Kinchakuda, a riverside meadow near Hiwada-yama, draws walkers along maintained hiking courses throughout the year. The Kōma-gawa river moves through it all, indifferent to the layers it passes between.