Kakunodate Is Over in Thirty Minutes

- On Moving the Starting Point -

The Day After I Wrote That There Is No Map

Yesterday I wrote about the hiyoke (a firebreak strip left open since the Edo period, most recently the site of the former town hall). I wrote that I cannot think of a use for that empty space.
I gave my reason as well: the town is full of vacant lots and empty houses, and there is no order of priority for dealing with them. No map, in other words.

The night I wrote that, something came to me in bed.
Should I write it up, or throw it away because it is too much trouble? I could not decide. When I cannot decide, I cannot sleep. When I cannot sleep, I start thinking about things I do not need to think about.
Ah, so my soul is telling me to write this one, I realised, and got up.

What had come to me was a map.
The day after writing that there is no map, I had gone and drawn one myself. And a very simple one at that: it only swaps the positions of car parks.

Let me say this up front. Anyone could think of this. The only difference is that most people never put it into a form.

A Town You Can Finish in Thirty Minutes

Ask about parking in Kakunodate and the answer is the car park by the Sakura-namiki, the row of cherry trees along the river.
You park, you walk a little and you are already at the samurai houses. You look at the street, you walk into the town a bit, there is nothing there, so you turn back, you take a look at the souvenir shops near the car park, and you move on to the next sight.
If you hurry, you are done in thirty minutes.

A town that can be finished in thirty minutes gets treated as a thirty-minute town.
Whatever is good about Kakunodate gets cut off there, half-shown.

Now the station.
The Shinkansen stops here, and yet nothing around the station says "welcome to Kakunodate" the way it once did.
The walk itself has atmosphere, but there is nowhere to stop along the way. You simply pass through a street of closed shutters.

Of course you do, I think to myself.
The customers who shopped on foot disappeared, the shops had no parking in front of them, and they lost out to the large stores built outside the town and vanished. The shops still trading today can be counted on your fingers.
So the visitors hurry over to the samurai district, and hurry out of Kakunodate.

If a place is run down and there is nothing to enjoy, people do not walk it. And because people do not walk it, it runs down further.
This loop has to be cut somewhere, once.

"It Exists" and "You Can Use It" Are Not the Same

Let me get ahead of one objection. There are coin lockers and a luggage service at the station and in front of it. I know that.
So if I write that there is nothing, someone will tell me there is. They are right.

They are right, and yet it looks different from the user's side.

First, the people who arrive do not know. Whether the sign is where a stranger's eye will land is not something a local can judge.
Second, I hear there are not enough of them. I cannot imagine there are enough during the cherry season.
Third, suitcases today are larger than they used to be. A box is no use if the dimensions do not fit.
And last, some people are uneasy about handing their luggage to a stranger.

People are selfish that way.
But it is those selfish people who come to a tourist town.

So counting what exists proves nothing. Something exists only once it is used.
And what is really missing is what lies ahead of the person who has just left their bags: somewhere to walk to.

The luggage counter is there. At the end of the walk from it, there is nothing.
That is not a facilities problem. It is a route problem.

The Car Park Decides the Route

Visitors do not start walking because of a signboard. They start walking from wherever they got out.
Where you drop people decides the route, and the route decides where the money lands.

That is why, in today's Kakunodate, only the area around Bukeyashiki-dori (the samurai residence street) does any business.
Naturally. That is where people are being dropped.

The prices are the interesting part.
The municipal car park in front of the station is free; the car park on the samurai side costs money. People still choose the paid one.
They are not choosing by price. They are choosing by where it sits on the route.

A car park is not a price list. It is this town's blueprint.

The Proposal: Move the Starting Point to the Station Side

My proposal is a single thing.
Move the car park for tour coaches over to the station side. That is all.

Is there open land for that, I wondered. There is.
Opposite the Kakunodate branch office of Semboku City Hall, around the municipal kindergarten (marked A on the diagram).

Put the coaches there and the starting point becomes the station area.
From there people walk through the town centre towards Bukeyashiki-dori. They walk the present route in reverse.

The important part is that nothing existing is taken away. The Sakura-namiki car park stays where it is.
This is not about removing anything. It is about changing the flow.

The Hill from Tatemachi to the Station Is Steeper Than It Looks

Here a question comes up.
Do the coaches parked at A have to be walked back to? Would a stroll of several hours even work if people had to return the same way?

I thought that version was no good myself.
I have walked the road from Tatemachi up to the station since I was a kid, and it is an uphill that is harder than it looks. Down on the way out, up on the way back. It is not a road to make visitors walk twice.

So here is how it goes.
Once the passengers are off, the coach repositions itself, empty, to the car park on the former grounds of the old Kita High School (marked B).
The visitors walk from the station through the town centre, take in Bukeyashiki-dori last, and board at the northern end of it. From there they carry straight on to the next destination.
For a short tour, park at B from the start, let them go round the loop, and drive on.

There is a reason B is where it is.
From that spot you can board directly out of Bukeyashiki-dori. You finish the street on foot and reach the coach without crossing a road or doubling back.
The pick-up point sits at the end of the walk. That single point is why I chose it.

Separate the place where people get off from the place where they get on. That alone means the hill is never climbed.

Private Cars Go the Other Way Round

So what happens to the Sakura-namiki car park?
It becomes private cars only. Individual visitors enter from the samurai side as they do now, come down into the town centre, and carry on towards the station.

Groups head north, individuals head south. Run them in opposite directions and you no longer have everyone pressed the same way along a narrow street.
Not one-way traffic. Circulation.

It May Only Start Working After I Am Gone

For the avoidance of doubt: this is not a matter of a few years.
Move the starting point and no shop appears that day. More people walk; because people walk, a shop opens; because there is a shop, people walk again. In that order, over decades.

Which also means that if we never begin something that takes decades, in a few decades we will still be a thirty-minute town.
Thirty minutes may get shorter on its own. It will not get longer.

The Objections, Written Down by Me

Let me line up the arguments against my own proposal. If they cannot be answered, this stays a bright idea and nothing more.

One. Making the plot next to the kindergarten a coach terminal.
Children are there. If the timings and the traffic lines are not designed around that first, the proposal should not be made at all.

Two. Repositioning is not free.
It costs the driver's hours and it costs fuel. That said, dropping off and picking up in different places is nothing unusual for tour coaches. Returning to the same spot, the way we do now, is the unusual arrangement.

Three. Drop people off where there is nothing waiting and all you have done is made them walk.
This is a question of order, and I think it runs the other way. Today nothing opens because nobody walks. Only once the starting point moves does a reason to open a shop exist. Chicken and egg, if you like - but you do get to choose where the egg is laid.

Four. Car park B is currently for ordinary vehicles only.
My guess is that a large vehicle coming down from the high school side has trouble turning left at that junction. It is only a guess, but anyone who drives something big will see what I mean.
If so, the question becomes whether to change the direction of entry or to fix the approach road. A reason a coach cannot park there is not a reason to abandon the idea. It is the thing to fix.

Five. There is winter. Where the snow gets pushed changes too when the starting point moves.

Six. There are the preservation district rules. The samurai side cannot be altered freely.
Which is exactly why this proposal moves the side that can be altered: the station side and Sotomachi, the old merchants' quarter.

And here is the part I most want to say.
This is a draft. It does not have to be A. It does not have to be B. Change the contents as you like.
But if we keep saying no, no, no, we end up doing nothing at all. This town has already spent several decades doing exactly that.

Who Really Decides This Town's Thirty Minutes

One more blunt thing.
What decides how long people stay in Kakunodate is probably not Kakunodate. It is the itinerary drawn up by the travel companies.
As long as "Kakunodate, thirty minutes" is printed on that sheet, the town can lay out whatever it likes and it will still be thirty minutes.

Moving the starting point means forcing that sheet to be rewritten.
Once the drop-off and the pick-up are different places, the itinerary has to be redrawn. And when it is redrawn, the length-of-stay column finally gets touched.

This is not a matter for the tourism section alone, nor for the city alone. The coach operators, the travel companies, the tourism association and the town itself all have to be looking at the same map, or nothing moves.
That is what makes it hard. The reason an idea anyone could have never takes shape is not a shortage of ideas. It is the absence of a place where everyone looks at the same map.

Even So, I Think the Time Is Now

I am not claiming this proposal is right. It is a map thought up by an amateur on a night he could not sleep.

But this much is certain.
The position of a single car park is deciding this town's thirty minutes.
And that position is the city's to decide. The land is on the city's side as well. It is not an impossible thing to ask.

If we are to carry on as a place people visit, I think now is the time for that reform.
Whether anyone is walking in front of the station a few decades from now - I will not be the one who sees the answer.

Anyone could think of this. Nobody puts it into a form.
That is why I could not sleep last night.