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Fukushima is the capital of Fukushima Prefecture, a city of about 276,000 people in the Fukushima Basin of the Nakadōri region, ringed by the Azuma Mountains to the west. The Tōhoku Shinkansen stops at Fukushima Station, and the city is known for its orchards and for the hot-spring towns on its outskirts.
The name is said to come from Fukushima Castle, renamed in the 1590s, and from 1702 the town was the seat of the Itakura lords of the Fukushima Domain. In the Meiji era it was made the prefectural capital, and in 1907 it became a city. The Tōhoku Main Line reached it in 1887, and the city's orchards now grow peaches, pears and apples.
Visitors come in April for the blossom of Hanamiyama Park and Mount Shinobu, drive the Bandai-Azuma Skyline past the crater of Mount Azuma-kofuji to Jōdodaira, and stay at the spa towns of Iizaka, Takayu and Tsuchiyu. In August the Waraji Festival carries a giant straw sandal through the streets.
Hanamiyama Park is a private flower farm on a hillside in the Watari district of Fukushima, opened free to the public by its owner in 1959. Each April its slopes of plum, peach, cherry, forsythia and magnolia bloom together, a scene the photographer Shōtarō Akiyama called a paradise in Fukushima.
Mount Shinobu is the 275-metre hill rising in the middle of Fukushima, a symbol of the city with lookouts over the streets below. Its park, planted with 10,000 cherry trees in 1899, is a top blossom spot, and Haguro Shrine on its slopes displays a giant straw sandal about 12 metres long.
The Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art is the prefectural art museum at the foot of Mount Shinobu in Fukushima, opened in 1984 beside the prefectural library. Its collection covers painters of Fukushima such as Shōji Sekine, prints by Kiyoshi Saitō, and Ben Shahn's Lucky Dragon series.
The Fukushima Waraji Festival is the summer festival of Fukushima, held near the station on the first weekend of August since 1970. Teams dance through the streets carrying a giant waraji straw sandal said to be the largest in Japan, which is then offered at Haguro Shrine on Mount Shinobu.
The Bandai-Azuma Skyline is the scenic mountain road west of Fukushima, opened in 1959 and running 28.7 kilometres from Takayu Onsen across the Azuma volcanoes. It passes steaming vents and the crater of Mount Azuma-kofuji, is closed by snow from November to April, and has been free since 2013.
Mount Azuma-kofuji is the active volcano of 1,707 metres in the Azuma Mountains west of Fukushima, named Little Fuji for its cone seen from the city. A short climb from Jōdodaira leads to the rim of its crater, about 450 metres across, and each spring a snow rabbit shape appears on its slopes.
Jōdodaira is the high plateau at about 1,600 metres in the Azuma Mountains of Fukushima, halfway along the Bandai-Azuma Skyline among the bare slopes of Mount Issaikyō. Boardwalks cross its wetland of alpine flowers, and its observatory was Japan's highest public one when it opened in 1993.
Takayu Onsen is the mountain hot-spring village about 750 metres up in the Azuma foothills of Fukushima, at the northern gate of the Bandai-Azuma Skyline. Its water is among the richest in sulphur in Japan, flowing downhill from nine springs without heating or added water since the Edo period.
Iizaka Onsen is the large hot-spring town in the north-west of Fukushima, lined with inns along both banks of the Surikami River and linked to the city centre by the Iizaka Line railway. Counted among the three great spas of old Ōshū, it was visited by the poet Bashō, who stayed here in 1689.
The Former Horikiri Residence is the restored home of the wealthy Horikiri merchant family in Iizaka Onsen, Fukushima, opened to the public in 2010. Its main house dates from 1881, and its Jukken-gura storehouse of 1775 is the oldest dated and largest in the prefecture, with a hot-spring footbath.
Iō-ji is a Shingon Buddhist temple near Iizaka Onsen in Fukushima, the family temple of the Shinobu Satō clan, traditionally founded by Kūkai in 826. It holds stone tablets for the brothers Satō Tsuginobu and Tadanobu, who died serving Minamoto no Yoshitsune, and was visited by Bashō.
Tsuchiyu Onsen is the hot-spring village on the Arakawa River in the hills south-west of Fukushima, with over 1,400 years of history as a spa and post town on the road to Aizu. It is one of Japan's three great homes of kokeshi wooden dolls, with their black-ringed heads and slim striped bodies.
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