A Road Left Behind By Pioneers

As a town, Koriyama was founded on land higher than the water level of rivers in the vicinity, making it barren and not suited to agriculture. In the early part of the Meiji Period a warrior of the Yonezawa Domain was posted to Koriyama as the town’s government official, and at the same time Kaisei-sha, which was organized by the town’s merchants, played a central role in recruiting workers from the Nihonmatsu Domain and the Aizu Domain and establishing a reservoir, fields and a shrine. Kaisei-sha’s premises were located in the town center and next to them was the Kaiseizandai Jingū Shrine, which is also referred to as “the Ise Shrine of Tohoku.” The road that passed in front of it is National Route 49, which links the east and west of Fukushima Prefecture, and it evolved as a new town lined with mulberry fields and the homes of tenant farmers. National Route 4 in front of the station runs through the prefecture from south to north and from the Edo Period it prospered as a post-station town. The road that runs in a straight line from National Route 4 across National Route 49 to Kaisei-sha is “Hayama Dori.”
Following the Great East Japan Earthquake I became interested in finding out more information on the land where I was born and so I frequented a second-hand bookstore that deals in old books on the region. There I discovered the first photographs taken of the town, which proved helpful in getting to know it. The painstakingly taken photographs show the area near Kaisei-sha. The photographer was probably visiting from a photography studio in Tokyo and was not a local. The series of photographs is known as “Nine images of Kaiseizan,” and I can imagine that at the time they were an important record for publicizing this enormous development.
From the time I was a child, whenever I went anywhere I often walked along Hayama Dori, whether it was to the library, the big park, the spinning mill, the historic elementary school, the reservoir, the public hall or the museum of historical materials. At the time I knew nothing about this town, but I now know that when I follow this road again in this way, I am tracing my own history and that of the town. When walking in Koriyama I view the dilapidated townscape that exists now as a cherished townscape evoking the development of that time