Kōnosu

About Kōnosu

A riverbank turned scarlet with poppies, a seven-metre pyramid of hina dolls and one of the world's heaviest fireworks: Kōnosu packs a surprising number of records into a quiet commuter city about 50 km north of Tokyo. It is known across Japan as a doll town, where craftsmen have long made the ceremonial hina dolls given to baby girls, and as a major grower of flowers for the Kantō region.

The area was once a centre of Musashi Province, dotted with ancient burial mounds, and the Tokugawa shoguns came here to hunt with falcons. Kōnosu-shuku was a post town on the Nakasendō, the old inland highway between Edo and Kyoto. Modern Kōnosu absorbed the neighbouring towns of Fukiage and Kawasato in 2005 and now has around 118,000 people.

The Arakawa River shapes the west of the city, and its broad floodplain hosts the poppy fields in May, cosmos in autumn and the October fireworks. Between Kōnosu and Yoshimi it reaches Japan's widest river width, a quirky record marked at the Onari Bridge.