All you need is Onioshidashi

A short hop from Tokyo, Karuizawa intrigues with its explosive landscape, scenic shrines and celebrity visitors: Beatles, emperors and Asiatic black bears. We go in search of them…

- Lyn Hughes

“English?” a much-handled laminated photo, taken in the 1970s. It was a standard family holiday photo but the people looked familiar. With a jolt I realised it was of Lennon, Yoko Ono, and a very young Sean Lennon. “Taken where you stand now!” he gesticulated.

My guide, Soichi, explained that John and Yoko had spent their summers in the nearby resort town of Karuizawa for what was to be the final four years of Lennon’s life. Like me, they had come to Onioshidashi to marvel at the extraordinary landscape formed from an eruption of the Asama volcano in 1783. Onioshidashi translates as “demons pushing out rocks” and, with the eruption killing over 1,000 people and smothering the area in lava, you could see how the park got its name.

Mount Asama is very much still active, the last major eruption being in 2009. Looking over at it from the park on an early autumn day, it dawned on me that what I initially thought was a cloud hanging over the volcano was actually a plume of vapour.

The park was startlingly beautiful in an otherworldly way. The landscape of black solidified lava and rock was dotted with vivid green plants growing where they could. Stop and look more closely and you’d see alpine flowers, darting lizards and a golden moss. Red railings led to the Buddhist Shrine at the heart of the park, dedicated to Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, and to which all the visitors were drawn.

“We Japanese are very confusing!” Soichi smiled, as he explained that most people follow both Shinto and Buddhism.At the shrine, a steady stream of visitors gave an offering of coins, prayed and then rang a bell and bowed. And not just human visitors. One couple arrived slightly out of breath and wheeling a pushchair with a small dog sitting proudly in it.