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Nagaoka is the second-largest city in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, on the Shinano River in the Chūetsu region, famous for its grand fireworks festival, one of Japan's three great fireworks shows, and for the Kome Hyappyō story. Its top sights are Yūkyūzan Park, Echigo Hillside Park, the Settaya brewing district and the Teradomari fish market.
Hori Naoyori founded the castle town in 1616, and it flourished under 13 generations of the Makino clan. In the Boshin War of 1868 the town was reduced to rubble, and a gift of 100 sacks of rice was sold to build a school, the tale known as Kome Hyappyō. Nagaoka became a city on 1 April 1906.
Nagaoka covers 891.06 km² and had about 265,000 people in 2021, and since 2006 mergers it reaches the Sea of Japan. It is 80 minutes from Tokyo on the Jōetsu Shinkansen, and its fireworks on 2 and 3 August, first held in 1879, are now part of a festival begun in 1946 to pray for recovery from the 1945 air raid.
Yūkyūzan Park is a hill park in Nagaoka, Japan, opened in 1919 on land of Aoshi Shrine and gifts from citizens after the town's 300th anniversary. Famed for cherry trees linked to cherry-loving lord Makino Tadatoki, it has ponds, a small zoo and the castle-shaped local history museum.
Aore Nagaoka is the city hall and civic plaza of Nagaoka, Japan, opened on 1 April 2012 by the station and designed by Kengo Kuma. Its name plays on the local words for let's meet, and its offices and arena surround the Nakadoma, a covered square, behind checkered panels of local cedar.
Settaya is a brewing district on the old Mikuni Kaidō road in Nagaoka, Japan, about 4 km south of the center, where sake, miso and soy sauce have long been made. Spared in the Boshin War and the 1945 air raid, it keeps old storehouses, including the Kina Saffron brewery's with plaster reliefs.
Echigo Hillside Park is the only national government park in Hokuriku, in Nagaoka, Japan, first opened in 1998 and grown to 338.4 ha by 2019. It has a vast lawn, play areas and a lookout, and its Nagaoka Fragrance Rose Garden grows 2,400 roses of 800 varieties chosen for scent.
Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art opened in July 1993 in the Senshūgahara Furusato no Mori in Nagaoka, Japan. Its collection of over 6,000 works covers world, Japanese and Niigata art, from Monet and Millais to Kishida Ryūsei, and holds about half of the former Taikō Collection.
Niigata Prefectural Museum of History opened on 1 August 2000 in Sekihara, Nagaoka, Japan, near the Umataka Jōmon site and Echigo Hillside Park. Its permanent displays trace the history of the prefecture, rice growing, life in the deep snow and the world of the Jōmon people.
Tochio Castle is a Sengoku mountain castle on 228 m Tsurujōyama in the Tochio area of Nagaoka, Japan, where Uesugi Kenshin spent his youth and fought his first battle. It fell in 1580 and was abandoned in 1610, and its moats, earthen bridges and enclosures survive almost intact.
Rakuzan-en is a garden in the Yoita area of Nagaoka, Japan, laid out from 1892 as the hillside villa of Miwa Juntarō, head of the Ōsakaya merchant house that grew rich on Shinano River shipping. Opened to the public in 1970, it has two stones carved with poems by the monk Ryōkan.
Teradomari Fish Market Street is a row of over ten fish shops, souvenir stores and eateries on the Sea of Japan coast at Teradomari in Nagaoka, Japan, nicknamed the Ameyoko of fish. Crab and yellowtail from nearby ports fill the stalls, and grilled seafood and crab soup are local favourites.
Hōtokusan Inari Taisha is a shrine in Nagaoka, Japan, whose legend traces its origin to the Jōmon period and which moved to its present site in the Bunsei era. Its large vermilion halls and torii are made of steel tube, and on the night of 2 November visitors light wish candles.
Ushi no Tsunotsuki is the bullfighting of the Yamakoshi area of Nagaoka, Japan, held since at least the Edo period and an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property since 1978. Bouts at the Yamakoshi arena run from May to November, and the bulls are parted before a clear winner emerges.
Nakayama Tunnel is a 922 m road tunnel in the Yamakoshi area of Nagaoka, Japan, the longest hand-dug road tunnel in the country. Villagers of Komatsukura cut it with picks, unpaid, from 1933 to 1949 to escape winter isolation, and it is now preserved as civil engineering heritage.
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