Niigata Prefecture Specialty Products, Souvenirs, Shrines and Temples, and Travel | 47 Prefecture Guide

Almost all of Niigata’s specialties can be explained by snow and rice. Food, sake, and crafts alike.

Specialties

Its rice harvest is among the highest in Japan. The plains were created by reclaiming lagoons and controlling the flooding of the Shinano River. It was not land that was good from the beginning, but a place made into good land.

Niigata has the largest number of sake breweries in Japan. There is rice, there is snowmelt water, and the winters are long and cold. All the conditions are in place for brewing that ferments slowly at low temperatures.

Hegi soba is soba that uses funori seaweed as a binder. It was born because wheat was difficult to grow in the mountains, and seaweed arrived via the Kitamaebune shipping routes which led to its creation.

Souvenirs

Sasa dango are dumplings with mugwort wrapped in bamboo leaves. A preserved food that uses the antibacterial properties of bamboo leaves it is also said to have been a portable food for Uesugi Kenshin.

Kaki no tane originated in Niigata. A story remains that in the Taisho period, when a mold for koban coins that had been accidentally crushed was used as it was, the distorted shape resembled persimmon seeds.

And sake. A small four-go bottle can be taken home.

Shrines and Temples

Yahiko Shrine in Yahiko Village is the ichinomiya of Echigo Province, and locally it is called “Oyahiko-sama.”

The deity of this shrine It is said to have taught the people of Echigo rice cultivation and how to obtain salt from the sea. It has the same structure as Shiogama Shrine in Miyagi. Rice and salt — these two have supported both the sake and the preserved foods of this land. The style of worship is two bows, four claps, and one bow, the same form as at Izumo Taisha and Usa Jingu. Mount Yahiko behind it has itself been treated as sacred ground.

Kasugayama Shrine in Joetsu City stands on the site of Uesugi Kenshin’s former castle, and the Bishamondo hall where Kenshin enshrined Bishamonten also remains. Because Sado has a history of religious figures such as Nichiren being exiled there, layers of belief different from those on the mainland remain.

Sightseeing

Sado Island Gold Mines is, was inscribed as a World Cultural Heritage Site in 2024 What was recognized was not the amount of gold, but the fact that large-scale gold production had been achieved entirely by hand before the age of mechanization.

Sado is also an island where the reintroduction of the nationally designated Special Natural Monument crested ibis into the wild is being advanced.

The tunnel of Kiyotsu Gorge, Echigo-Yuzawa, and the terraced rice fields of Tokamachi. The sheer amount of snow has become the landscape itself.

Traditional Crafts

There are 17 nationally designated items. This is second only to Tokyo (23), and equal to Kyoto (17).

Ojiya chijimi ・Echigo-jofu is was inscribed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009. The process includes “yuki-sarashi,” in which woven cloth is spread out on early-spring snow to whiten it.

Then Tsubame-Sanjo. Beginning with Japanese nails, and changing what it made from sickles to knives and Western tableware, it has been hammering metal for 400 years.

For details, see [VILLAGE Report vol.33] 17 items: textiles, blades, and paulownia

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References: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; National Tax Agency, “Overview of the Sake Brewing Industry”; Niigata Prefecture; Sado City; Yahiko Shrine; Agency for Cultural Affairs; Association for the Promotion of Traditional Craft Industries — Value Village Editorial Department