Ouchi-juku, Shimogo

Ouchi-juku in Shimogo is one of the post stations on the Minamiyama-dori road (also called the Minamiyama Kaido or the Shimotsuke Kaido), which ran from the castle town of Aizu-Wakamatsu to Imaichi in Shimotsuke, and it covers about 11.3 hectares. As a typical example that keeps the form of a post town of this region, it was selected as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings in 1981. The natural setting of surrounding mountains is also valued as part of the scenery. The natural watercourse that runs through the town was chosen in 1996 as one of the 100 Soundscapes of Japan Worth Preserving.

The main thing to see is the layout of the street, which runs about 450 meters along the road. Thatched, hip-roofed main houses from the late Edo to the Meiji period stand at roughly equal intervals, with their gable ends facing the road. The sight of the large triangular gable faces lined up along the street clearly reflects the form of the post town of the past. Walk from one end of the street to the other and look at the direction and spacing of the roofs.

Keeping a thatched town going requires materials, skills and protection against fire. In Ouchi-juku, there is a thatch storehouse, the Townscape Exhibition Hall houses a training center for thatching skills, and the district's thatch fields have been designated a "Hometown Cultural Property Forest." Residents cut thatch and practice roofing, and the spirit of mutual aid called "yui" remains. For fire prevention, water tanks and water cannons were installed from 1991 to 1993, and every house has an indoor hydrant.

The starting point of preservation was the 1970s. In 1970 Fukushima Prefecture carried out an emergency survey of folk materials, and in 1972 the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the prefecture surveyed the settlement and townscape. The Ouchi-juku Preservation Council was formed in 1979, the town's preservation ordinance followed the next year, and selection came in 1981. The first snow festival was held in fiscal 1986. The road itself was designated a national historic site in 2001 as the Shimotsuke Kaido (Historic Road).

Today many buildings serve as restaurants and souvenir shops, and the number of visitors is around 800,000 a year. The town lists behavior that disregards the landscape, traffic jams, and problems of reception such as toilets as issues, and says further measures are needed to balance preservation and tourism. Taking fiscal 1977 as 100, the population of the Ouchi area was 61 in fiscal 2020, declining more slowly than the town as a whole at 53.7. The reason is thought to be that tourism-centered work has appeared and younger generations keep living there.