Shimotsuke, Tochigi

Flat agricultural land stretches between the Sugata and Omoi rivers, punctuated by the low profiles of ancient temple foundations. This is Shimotsuke, a city assembled in 2006 from three smaller towns, and the ground here holds more history than its quiet surface suggests — the ruins of Shimotsuke Kokubunji and Shimotsuke Kokubun-niji, state temples ordered into existence during the Nara period, now sit inside a park where multiple varieties of cherry trees have been planted among the stone footings.

Kaironji, founded in 781, was later designated a rest stop for shogunal processions to Nikkō — a practical function that says something about where Shimotsuke sits on older maps of movement through the Kantō interior. The Koganei Ichirizuka, a milestone marker along the old road, still stands. At the roadside station Michinoeki Shimotsuke, kanpyō — dried gourd shavings, a local specialty — appears in various packaged forms alongside spinach and onions from the surrounding fields. The land is genuinely productive: barley malt and agricultural machinery are manufactured here, and the farms supply vegetables to the wider region.

Then there is Grimm no Mori, a park themed around Grimm fairy tales, rooted in a sister-city relationship with the German village of Steinbrücken — an unexpected pairing that the city has sustained through an annual September festival and winter illuminations. The Tenbyō no Hana Matsuri brings people to the ancient temple grounds each spring. These two registers — Nara-period earthworks and a German folk-tale park — occupy the same flat terrain without obvious contradiction, which is perhaps what gives Shimotsuke its quietly particular character.