Furano

overview

Fields in bands of purple and gold, with a line of volcanoes behind them.

Furano lies in a long valley between two ranges: the Tokachi mountains, a chain of volcanic summits to the east, and the Yubari mountains to the west. The basin was settled by farmers in the last years of the nineteenth century, and it is still farmed field by field: wheat, potatoes, onions, melons and, on the gentler slopes, the lavender that made its name. The town calls itself the navel of Hokkaido, and in its festival, Heso Matsuri, dancers paint faces on their stomachs and parade through the streets.

Lavender was planted here in the 1950s for perfume oil. When synthetic scents ended the trade in the 1970s, most farmers ploughed their fields under, but one grower kept his. A photograph of his hillside on a national railway calendar in 1976 brought the first visitors, and that farm, Farm Tomita in Nakafurano, is now the reason many people come to the valley. The flowers run down the slopes in stripes of purple, white, pink, red and gold, and the scent carries on the dry air.

There is more to Furano than one crop. The town makes its own wine and cheese, its potters and woodworkers sell from cabins in the forest, and the countryside is the setting of a much-loved television drama of the 1980s about a father raising his children in a farmhouse here. For a traveller in Hokkaido, Furano pairs naturally with Biei, half an hour north: two days among the farms and hills of central Hokkaido, with the Daisetsuzan range on the horizon.