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Yamagata is the capital of Yamagata Prefecture, a city of about 243,000 people in the long Yamagata Basin, with the Zaō mountains rising to the south-east. It is reached from Tokyo by the Yamagata Shinkansen, and is known for the taro stew called imoni, which crowds share at a festival by the Mamigasaki River each September.
The warlord Mogami Yoshiaki made Yamagata his castle town around 1600, enlarging the castle and laying out the streets of the town around it. Yamagata became a city in 1889 as the prefectural capital, and its Meiji and Taishō years left brick and timber landmarks such as Bunshōkan and the old Saiseikan hospital.
Visitors climb the thousand steps of Risshaku-ji, where Bashō heard the cicadas, walk the moats of Kajō Park and the halls of Bunshōkan, then ride the Zaō Ropeway to the snow monsters and bathe in the sulphur water of Zaō Onsen. In August the Hanagasa Festival takes over the main street.
Yamagata Castle, also called Kajō or Castle of Mist, is the ruined castle at the heart of Yamagata, laid out by the warlord Mogami Yoshiaki around 1600 and later rebuilt by the Torii family. Its moats and walls are now Kajō Park, a National Historic Site and a famous place for cherry blossom.
Bunshōkan is the former Yamagata prefectural office and assembly hall in the centre of Yamagata, built in English Renaissance style in 1916 after a great fire. An Important Cultural Property, its brick walls, granite facing and clock tower were restored and opened to the public in 1995.
The Former Saiseikan Hospital is the striking wooden hospital building of 1878, moved into Kajō Park in Yamagata and now the city's local museum. Its tall tower, ring-shaped ground floor and stained glass mix Japanese temple carpentry with Western fashion, and it is an Important Cultural Property.
The Mogami Yoshiaki Historical Museum stands beside Kajō Park in Yamagata and tells the story of Mogami Yoshiaki, the warlord who made Yamagata his castle town. Its displays include a helmet given to him by Oda Nobunaga and his iron command baton, and entry to the museum is free.
Risshaku-ji, known as Yamadera or the mountain temple, is the Tendai temple founded in 860 on a cliff north-east of central Yamagata. A stairway of some 1,000 steps climbs past weathered rocks and small halls to the Godaidō platform, and Bashō wrote his famous cicada haiku here in 1689.
The Yamadera Bashō Memorial Museum stands on a terrace facing Risshaku-ji in Yamagata, opened in 1989, 300 years after Matsuo Bashō came to the temple on his journey to the far north. It shows writings and art linked to Bashō, and its sukiya-style wing has tea rooms open for hire.
The Motoki Stone Torii stands in the south-east of Yamagata and is held to be the oldest stone torii gate in Japan, raised in the Heian period for the mountain worship of Ryūzan. Cut from tuff and 3.5 metres high, it is thick and low in the old style and an Important Cultural Property.
Senshō-ji is a True Pure Land temple in Yamagata, moved here by Mogami Yoshiaki to pray for his daughter Komahime, executed in 1595 at just 15. Its main hall of 1703 is the largest temple building in the city and ranked first in Tōhoku among wooden buildings of its time.
Zaō Onsen is the hot-spring village at about 880 metres in the Zaō mountains south-east of central Yamagata, first used, by tradition, in the year 110. Its strongly acid sulphur water flows from dozens of springs into open-air baths and inns, and it stands beside one of Japan's largest ski areas.
The Zaō snow monsters are the fir trees above Zaō Onsen in Yamagata that freeze over each winter, as wind-blown supercooled fog coats them with rime until they become white figures. They begin to form in late December and are at their best from February into early March.
The Zaō Ropeway climbs from Zaō Onsen in Yamagata to the Jizōsanchō station at 1,661 metres, in two stages by way of Juhyō Kōgen. Opened in 1962 and later rebuilt with funitel cabins, it carries skiers and hikers, and in winter takes visitors straight into the field of snow monsters.
The Yamagata Hanagasa Festival fills the streets of central Yamagata every August, when thousands of dancers in rows swing sedge hats trimmed with red safflowers to the beat of the Hanagasa Ondo. Begun in 1963, it is counted with those of Sendai, Aomori and Akita among the great festivals of Tōhoku.
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