Kanto and Chubu
The Kanto Plain is Japan’s largest level ground – a broad alluvial basin drained by the Tone, Arakawa, and Tama rivers that Tokyo now occupies from edge to edge. The mountains begin where the plain ends, abruptly, at ranges named with compass directions: Northern Alps (Hida), Central Alps (Kiso), Southern Alps (Akaishi). Before the railways the interior was the central problem of travel between Edo and Kyoto; the Nakasendo highway solved it by climbing through fifty-three mountain post towns, many of which stand essentially unchanged in the valley folds they have occupied since the seventeenth century.
The shinkansen has compressed the distances but not the landscape. Nagano is ninety minutes from Tokyo; Gifu is reachable in two hours through Nagoya. The region rewards those who plan around the mountain valleys rather than the city. Coming west from Tokyo on the Chuo Line, the apartment towers thin out at Hachioji and the hills close in. From there the routes divide: north toward Gunma’s volcanic highlands and river headwaters, northwest into the Nagano basin and the old silk-country towns, and west into Gifu’s river-cut highlands where the forest takes over and the roads get quieter.
No landlocked prefecture in Japan records more beekeeping households than Nagano. Five hundred and sixty registered operations manage hives across elevation bands from the valley-floor apple orchards to the sub-alpine edges, making this mountain-ringed interior the most densely beekept territory in Japan for most of the past four decades.
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Nagano is bounded by eight other prefectures, touches neither sea nor any prefecture that does, and has spent its history finding ways around that. The old Zenkoji pilgrimage route brought traffic from the north and south; the silk industry, which ran through the late Meiji and Taisho periods and made Suwa, Ueda, and Matsumoto into industrial cities, required mulberry cultivation in the lower valleys and trade routes to the coast. Matsumoto Castle -- one of Japan's six original surviving feudal castles, called Karasu-jo (Crow Castle) for the darkness of its wooden walls -- is the most visited of the interior landmarks, but the older character of Shinshu is in the smaller valley towns: Obuse, with its Hokusai paintings in the temple complex and chestnut orchards; Narai, a Nakasendo post town so well preserved that the rooflines along the main street have not changed in two hundred years.
The regional food identity is buckwheat. Shinshu soba, made from locally grown grain at altitude and served fresh, is different enough in texture from lowland versions that buckwheat regionalism -- which prefecture's soba is better -- is an ongoing argument in Japan. Shinshu miso, aged cold, goes into the broth that comes before it. The mountain vegetables organized by spring foraging and the mushroom season in autumn extend the table into wild sourcing in a way the coast never does.
The beekeeping year in Nagano follows the flower calendar from the valley floor upward -- acacia in the lower elevations first, then the mountain species as the season climbs. The Kurosawa family's operation, a primary source for L'Abeille's Nagano catalog, documents this cascade lot by lot: spring multifloral, early summer multifloral, and the late-bloom window that the alpine terrain keeps open after the coastal zones have finished. The Nihon mitsubachi (Japanese honeybee) honey from this area -- harvested once a year, from wild bees in mountain hollows -- carries soba nectar from the late-summer fields and closes the year with a character specific to this elevation and no other.
Gunma sits at the northern rim of the Kanto Plain where the level ground runs out against the Joshinetsu Highlands. The Tone River begins here, in the volcanic uplands above Minakami, and runs east across the entire Kanto Plain to the sea – the longest river system in the region, and the source of most of Tokyo’s water.
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The hot spring town of Kusatsu sits at 1,200 meters on the volcanic flank of Mount Shirane. The water emerges near 50 degrees Celsius with a pH so low that nothing survives in the river it drains. A ceremony called yumomi -- stirring the water with flat wooden paddles to cool it enough to bathe -- has been performed several times daily in the same bathhouse since the Edo period and is now a designated intangible cultural property. The highland roads above Minakami follow the Tone tributaries through a terrain of mixed forest, river gorge, and ski areas that share the same valleys with beehives.
The mountain cherry trees that line these valley edges produce a honey that L'Abeille currently ranks second nationally in its seasonal catalog -- a limited release from a wild forest source that appears briefly and sells out. The same beekeeper's operations extend through apple orchards and late-summer soba fields, which means the Gunma calendar runs from spring cherry through summer apple and into the buckwheat flush of late July and August. The soba fields above Minakami are visible from the road when they are in flower, white and brief.
The honey to look for here comes in the brief windows between seasons. The yamazakura (wild mountain cherry) release is the most limited and most closely watched; the apple and soba that follow are more available. L'Abeille documents these individually by beekeeper and season.
The eastern third of Gifu Prefecture – the district called Tono, meaning eastern Mino – is a river-cut highland where the Kiso River and its tributaries have carved the landscape into narrow valleys separated by forested ridges. The beekeeper Hori Kenji, whose operation in Mizunami has won the national Honey of the Year competition twice in five years, places stationary hives in this forest on foot, by locating the bloom.
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The towns of Ena and Mizunami sit on the upper Kiso River, not far from the Nakasendo's most intact section -- the post towns of Magome and Tsumago stand near the Nagano border, their centuries-old wooden streetscapes largely unchanged and now protected as preservation districts. The highland between them carries a forest ecology that has not been converted to managed cedar plantation: deciduous stands mixed with the holly-family tree that blooms in early June, its small white flowers working against a canopy old enough to support a beekeeping sequence with few parallels in Japan. Mizunami is better known outside Japan as a source of Mino porcelain; the forest surrounding the clay districts is what matters here.
Hori Beekeeping won the national competition in 2019 for yuzu honey from the Ena mountains -- a fruit that grows on steep slopes unsuited to most cultivation, harvested from hive sites that the Hori family places by walking the terrain rather than driving to it. In 2024 they won again, for yamazakura honey from the Tono range, taking both the judged championship and the visitor prize simultaneously. It was the second time they had achieved that double result. The interval between the two wins was occupied in part by the question of which year's soyogo would be better.
Soyogo (ソヨゴ, Ilex pedunculosa) -- one of Japan's sixteen officially classified primary nectar plants -- blooms here in early June, producing a honey that Gifu producers describe as wild and densely complex. The tree's name in this region refers to the metallic sound its leaves make in the wind; in Hiroshima the same tree is called fukurashi (フクラシ), after the way a dry leaf held to a flame swells and pops. Two names, the same tree, no consolidated national identity -- which is part of why this honey remains a discovery rather than a recognized product. Hori's soyogo and award-winning yamazakura and yuzu reach Tokyo through Isetan Mitsukoshi and tabechoku.com.
Mount Takao is a 599-meter forested peak at the end of the Keio Line, forty minutes from Shinjuku, technically within the administrative boundary of Tokyo. More visitors climb it annually than any mountain peak in the world by recorded count – most on the lower temple trails, some on the longer routes that cross the ridge toward Sagamiko.
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The lower trails on Takao-san follow old pilgrimage routes through mixed deciduous forest that has not been converted to cedar plantation -- rarer in Honshu than it sounds. Wild mountain cherry, oak, hornbeam, and the shrubby understory plants that produce seasonal forage run from the Hachioji valley floor up to the ridgeline. The Tamagawa flows south below, and the Sagamiko reservoir to the west marks where the Kanto mountains begin in earnest. Hachioji itself is a university city with an unusual amount of old forest at its edges and an access to mountain terrain that the rest of the metropolitan area no longer has.
Japan's urban beekeeping movement traces to the Ginza Bee Project of 2006, which demonstrated that a rooftop apiary in central Tokyo could produce honey worth naming and selling. The movement spread to schools, campuses, and corporate rooftops over the following decade. Hachioji sits at the opposite edge of that logic: urban by postal address, adjacent to enough old forest that the honey reflects the mountain rather than the city. L'Abeille maintains an apiary here from which their Tokyo Sakura honey -- currently the top-ranked domestic product in their catalog -- is harvested each spring.
The Tokyo Sakura honey from the Hachioji apiary is a yamazakura type, from wild mountain cherry trees on the Takao slopes rather than the ornamental Somei Yoshino that colors the city parks. Refrigerated, seasonal, and limited in quantity, it appears in early spring and sells out. The urban address is incidental; the forest is the story.
The geography between the Kanto Plain and the Chubu highlands is what produces Japan’s most studied beekeeping territory. Nagano’s altitude variation means each valley runs its own seasonal calendar; a beekeeper who knows which slope holds the acacia bloom longest has an advantage no scale can substitute for. In Gifu the forest continuity that was removed from coastal Japan – replaced by monoculture timber, then abandoned – survives in the river-cut highland corridors, sustaining flower sequences the JBA nectar plant list records but cannot reproduce. The honey that comes out of this region tends to be specific: a named mountain, a named beekeeper, a named season, from a tree the consumer will likely need to look up.
Getting Here
The Hokuriku Shinkansen connects Tokyo to Nagano Station in approximately 90 minutes (Joetsu Shinkansen or Hakutaka services). The Tokaido Shinkansen reaches Nagoya from Tokyo in 90 minutes; from Nagoya, the JR Chuo Line runs east to Gifu and continues to Ena and Nakatsugawa for the Tono mountain area (approximately 1 hour from Nagoya). Gunma is served from Ueno and Omiya by Joetsu Shinkansen to Takasaki; Minakami requires a local connection up the Joetsu line (approximately 1.5 hours total from Tokyo). The Tokyo western edge – Hachioji and Takao – is on the Chuo Line from Shinjuku, 40 minutes.
Seasonal Events Not to Miss
Late April – early May: Acacia bloom in the Nagano valley floors. The window opens at the warmest low-elevation sites and runs upslope over two to three weeks. The same period: apple orchards at peak forage in Nagano and Gunma.
Late May – early June: Soyogo (Ilex pedunculosa) in bloom in the Gifu Tono mountains. One of Japan’s sixteen officially classified primary nectar plants; the bloom window runs approximately ten to fourteen days. The core production zone is the forested area around Ena and Mizunami.
Late June – July: Yamazakura honey release from Gifu. Hori Beekeeping releases limited quantities through tabechoku.com and Isetan Mitsukoshi; the 2024 national champion honey came from this window and sold through quickly.
Late July – August: Soba (buckwheat) in flower in the Gunma highlands and Nagano plateau. The white fields are visible from the valley roads. The honey window that follows is brief.
August 3: Japan Honey Day (8/3 = hachi-mitsu). The annual Honey of the Year competition is held in Tokyo on this date, organized by the Japan Honey Meister Association at the Ginza venue where the urban beekeeping movement began. Kanto-Chubu producers have taken the domestic championship three times in recent years.
November – March: Mountain hot spring season across the region. Kusatsu and Shima (Gunma) and the Nagano spa valleys are at their quietest in the cold months.
Where to Buy Honey
Hori Beekeeping (堀養蜂園) – Ena and Mizunami, Gifu. Direct producer sales from the site; distribution also through Isetan Mitsukoshi stores and tabechoku.com. The national champion yamazakura (2024) and yuzu (2019) honeys are the primary products, with soyogo and a soyogo mead as secondary offerings. horiyouhouen.jp
L’Abeille – Founded 1946, with own apiary in Hachioji, Tokyo. The Tokyo Sakura honey and urban multifloral from the Hachioji apiary are available online; Nagano single-origin lots from the Kurosawa family are documented by season and type. Ships nationally. shop.labeille.jp
Miel-Mie (Kaneichi Shouten) – Kyoto-based single-origin specialist. Honey Hunter Ichikawa Takusaburo visits Kanto-Chubu beekeepers directly and documents individual lots from Gifu, Gunma, and Nagano – each named for the producer, the site, and the season. miel-mie.com