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Toyota is a city of about 420,000 people in Aichi Prefecture, about 50 minutes from Nagoya by train, known around the world as the home of Toyota Motor Corporation. Beyond its car plants the city reaches far into the hills, taking in the maple gorge of Kōrankei, the old post town of Asuke and the autumn cherry blossom of Obara.
Formerly called Koromo, the town was the seat of the small Koromo Domain under the Naitō clan, and it took the name Toyota for its long ties with the carmaker. In 2005 it absorbed Asuke, Obara and other mountain towns and villages, and now covers more than 900 square kilometres.
Visitors tour the Toyota Kaikan Museum and the Kuragaike hall, see the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art and a match at Toyota Stadium. In autumn they head for the maples of Kōrankei, the rebuilt Asuke Castle and the four-season cherry trees of Obara.
Kōrankei is a gorge of the Tomoe River in the Asuke district of Toyota, famous for its autumn colours and for the dogtooth violets that flower in spring. Its more than 4,000 maples trace back to 1634, when a priest of Kōshaku-ji temple planted maples and cedars along the path to the temple.
Taigetsu Bridge is the footbridge across the Tomoe River at Kōrankei in Toyota and the best-known symbol of the gorge. It was named in 1953 and has been rebuilt several times, most recently in 2007, and it stands at the heart of the Kōrankei maple festival every autumn.
Asuke Old Town is the historic centre of the Asuke district of Toyota, which grew as Asuke-juku, a post town on the Sanshū Kaidō, the old Salt Road into the mountains. Long one of the main towns of the Oku-Mikawa hills, it sits beside the Kōrankei gorge and was merged into Toyota in 2005.
Asuke Castle is a mountain castle on Mount Mayumi, 301 metres high, above Asuke in Toyota, used until the Sengoku period. After digs its tower, long house, lookouts and gates were rebuilt in wood and opened in 1993, a rare chance, says castle scholar Senda Yoshihiro, to feel a castle of that era.
The Toyota Municipal Museum of Art opened in 1995 on the hill where Koromo Castle once stood, near the centre of Toyota. Designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, architect of the new Museum of Modern Art in New York, its simple steel and glass halls open onto views across the city.
The Toyota Kaikan Museum is the corporate museum of Toyota Motor Corporation in Toyota, opened in 1977 for the company's 40th anniversary. Renewed in 2005, it shows the company's latest technology for safety and the environment, and a partner robot plays the trumpet several times a day.
Toyota Stadium is a football and rugby stadium in Toyota Central Park, opened in 2001 and built by the city with the 2002 World Cup in mind to a design by Kisho Kurokawa. It is the second-largest stadium in Japan built only for ball games, and Nagoya Grampus play many home games here.
The Toyota Kuragaike Commemorative Hall is a museum in Toyota opened in 1974, when Toyota Motor reached ten million cars built. It tells the story of how the company was founded, has an art salon, and keeps the former home of Kiichirō Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Motor.
Obara Shikizakura are the rare four-season cherry trees of the Obara district of Toyota, about 10,000 of them, a sight found nowhere else in Japan. They bloom in autumn as well as spring, and every November the Obara Shikizakura Festival celebrates their blossom alongside the autumn leaves.
Sanage Shrine is an ancient Shinto shrine at the foot of Mount Sanage in Toyota, listed in the Engishiki and ranked third shrine of old Mikawa Province. It is known for the custom of offering left-handed sickles, linked to its god Ōusu, held to be the left-handed twin brother of Yamato Takeru.
Mount Sanage is a mountain 629 metres high on the border of Toyota and Seto, at the western edge of the Mikawa highlands in Aichi Kōgen Quasi-National Park. Long worshipped for its great rocks, it is a popular climb on the Tōkai Nature Trail, with Sanage Shrine at its foot.
Sanshū Asuke Yashiki is a living museum in the Asuke district of Toyota, opened in 1980 to show the vanishing ways of old rural Japan and pass on traditional skills. Its thatched farmhouse looks old but was newly built, and traditional crafts are shown and handed down there.
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