YUNOKAMI-ONSEN STATION (FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE)

Thatch is back and drawing a crowd

Photos by Yomiuri Shimbun Photographer Masaaki Nakajima

By Hajime Someya

Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

It was so quiet that it felt like a thatched roof had absorbed all the sound from around Yunokami-onsen Station.

When a sliding door to the station's entrance was closed, the sound of crackling firewood diverted our attention. A sunken hearth in the corner of a cosy waiting room drew us in, making the cooler weather slightly more bearable.

It is one kilometer to the town of Yunokami-onsen, where public outdoor hot springs are nestled in a scenic valley. The departure point at Yunokami-onsen Station is a tourist attraction in itself.

A thatcher, called a kayate, recalled his work on the station that began 18 years ago. "I was so surprised when I was asked to make a thatched roof for the station just for the interest of sightseers," Goro Hoshi, 79, said.

When Aizu Tetsudo Co. asked Hoshi about the order, he was contemplating retirement. In those days, thatched roofs had been a feature along the Aizu Tetsudo railway line between Nishi-Wakamatsu and Aizu-kogen stations, but were later changed to tiled roofs.

Hoshi undertook the work on the train station as a master builder, thinking it was to be his final work.

Twenty thatchers worked under Hoshi's direction. Old and new cogon grasses were laid out in turn, and were bound tightly to the roof using thin strips of wood called oshiboko.

About a month later, on Nov. 30, 1987, the old Japanese tradition of thatched roof architecture reemerged at the station.

The roof has sentimental value also for local people.

Toshio Hoshi, 74, (no relation to Goro Hoshi) who runs an inn at a nearby hot spring, said, "People around here have a strong spirit of cooperation called the spirit of yui.

The act of "yui" means in Aizu, to rethatch roofs together. When rethatching a roof, all the neighbors would come out to help with the work. People who had regular jobs would take days off to help with the rethatching. The work of rethatching a roof itself symbolizes "an oshiboko," as it binds a community together. But as houses became modernized, old-fashioned virtues weakened.

"Yui was an old way of thinking. But if the station's thatched roof remains, I think tradition will not be completely forgotten," Toshio Hoshi said.

In July, the station's roof will be rethatched for the first time. The master builder will again be Hoshi.