Visit Wakayama

Just above the Kishū Ishigami Tanabe Plum Grove, one of Tanabe City’s signature landscapes, the mountainside is covered with ubame oak, the tall evergreen trees used to make premium Kishū binchotan charcoal.

“The charcoal forests and plum orchards planted on these steep mountain slopes have helped prevent landslides, serve as natural water reservoirs, protect honeybees, and preserve biodiversity,” says Maruyama.

This traditional farming system, practiced since the Edo period, has been recognized for its sustainability and designated as the “Minabe-Tanabe Ume System,” a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System.

Yukashi-gata, in Maruyama’s hometown of Nachikatsuura, is a brackish lagoon where seawater from the Kumano-nada Sea mixes with freshwater. A walking path runs around its edge, offering views that change with the seasons.

“When I walked around Yukashi-gata with birds as my focus, I saw way more than I expected. It made me realize just how diverse tidal flat environments like this can be.”

The main subject in the photograph is a grey heron, but the lagoon also attracts other waterbirds, including mallards, eastern spot-billed ducks, and common sandpipers.

This photograph captures the Kii Mountains from Irokawa, a village in the upper reaches of the Ota River, which flows from Mt. Nachi into the Kumano-nada Sea.

“There is a phrase, Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku-ho, or ‘the 3,600 peaks of Kumano,’ used to describe the rugged mountain ranges here. The elevations are not especially high, but the mountains are steep, dense, and layered one after another. The phrase also speaks to the faith that lives within these mountains, and I feel this landscape embodies both their sacredness and their vast scale.”

You can almost hear the relaxed song of the small yet vigilant varied tit.

While searching for a premium plum orchard location for our next bird, Maruyama arrived at an orchard in Minabe, not far from Senri-no-Hama Beach on the Kii Route.

“The plum orchards in the rural backyard hills here are carefully tended, but just enough natural forest remains around them. I could hear the calls of Japanese tits and white-eyes echoing through the trees. The sense of connection between man and nature you get here feels very Wakayama to me.”

It was late February when the first signs of spring were beginning to stir. The delicate beauty of the plum blossoms, just starting to open, moved Maruyama deeply.

Photo by Yoshiki Maruyama
 Born in 1982 in Nachikatsuura, Wakayama. Photographer. Working with the theme of “capturing the memory of places and the lives of the people who inhabit them,” Maruyama documents local communities, Shugendo practices, and the nature, climate, and flow of time that define Wakayama. For this project, he joined as a featured guest hiker traversing the Koyasan-Ryūjin area while taking landscape photography that brings readers up close and personal to the local wild birds.

This feature is produced in collaboration with PAPERSKY No. 74, a travel and lifestyle magazine.