Yame Guidebook

A half day in the hills of Tachibana: a satoyama lunch cooked by local mothers, then konnyaku made the old way with wood ash. Lunch is at the Former Ouchi Residence, birthplace of Ouchi Chozo, a politician who worked for friendship between Japan and China from the Meiji to the early Showa era. A local preservation group restored the house and reopened it in April 2023.

• A satoyama lunch made from local seasonal food
• Making konnyaku with Nakashima-san of Odotani no Sato, set with wood ash
• The Former Ouchi Residence and the story of saving it

Know-how around pickles, konnyaku, bamboo craft and mountain work is not reaching the next generation. Here, cooking for guests is a way to keep that culture alive.

A working waterwheel mill that makes incense only from Yame cedar leaves and tabu leaves. A 5.5 m waterwheel drives 15 pestles that grind dried cedar leaves into powder over about 23 hours. Built in 1918 with money from 21 locals, bought by the Baba family in 1961, and rebuilt in 2008 by a father and son team of waterwheel carpenters from Kurume.

• Pestles moved only by water, and cedar leaves turning to powder
• Cedar incense with no added scent or color
• Baba-san calls himself "the forest's cleaner"

About 60% of Yame is forest. At its peak the area had over 40 incense waterwheels, cut down by imports, electric power and a lack of successors.

A tub maker founded in 1959 and now in its third generation. Rice tubs, sushi tubs, bath pails and pickling barrels, all made by hand from wood and bamboo. The Chikugo area once had around 60 tub makers; only a few remain in Kyushu today.

• Hoops woven from Yame bamboo instead of metal
• Boards of different widths matched by feel (about ten years to learn)
• Ongoing demand from breweries, temples and taiko drum makers

Yame grows both cedar and bamboo, so the craft kept local work circulating. Some sake breweries are going back to wooden tubs.

A Kurume Kasuri workshop founded in 1891. It keeps the traditional way of preparing indigo and dyes yarn more than 50 times to build its shades of blue. The fifth generation, Kensuke Yamamura, dyes; the fourth generation weaves.

• Indigo made ready by fermentation, called aidate
• Lye from local oak ash, wheat bran and shell lime from the Ariake Sea
• Cloth coming out of the vat brown and turning blue in the air

Indigo is alive and needs care every day. Many trades in Yame depend on this kind of upkeep that visitors never see.

An organic tea farm at 400 to 600 m in Yabe Village. Snow covers the fields in winter and new buds come late; the farm calls this "late-budding tea from the snowy mountain". It makes green tea, Japanese black tea and oolong, with JAS organic certification since 2015.

• Mountain tea fields and the tea factory
• Lunch at the tea house
• Fukuoka Design Award grand prize (2024); platinum at the Japanese Tea Award for its oolong (2023)

A chance to hear the matcha crisis from a grower. Yabe residents say they want to grow from 800 people to 2,000.

A walk through the white-walled old town. Ogata Butsudan does the final stage of Yame-Fukushima altars, lacquering, gilding and assembling. Ito Gonjiro Shoten makes Yame lanterns, first in Japan by volume. The Former Yame District Office was built in the Meiji era and restored by an NPO; part of it is Asahiya Saketen. Konomi Honke is Kyushu's oldest tea wholesaler, founded in the early 1700s, and gave "Yame tea" its name.

• 13:30 Souvenir shopping at Unagi no Nedoko
• 15:00 Chakabuki (a tea tasting game) and matcha with Imamura-san
• 16:30 Re:crafted: a showcase of Yame crafts
• 17:00 Konomi Honke, a late Edo town house and its tea roasting room

The white-walled streets and craft skills are what residents most want to keep. Here we meet the people who keep the town working.

Founded in 1948, the last Kurume Kasuri weaver in Yame City. Third generation Kyozo Shimogawa took over at 22 after university, and his son has now joined. The workshop often works with artists from Finland, Sweden and other countries.

• 20 looms driven by belts from one motor in the ceiling
• A talk by Kyozo-san on the future of Kurume Kasuri
• The gallery, with fabric sold by the meter

He keeps the old way while trying new sales channels and overseas projects. He also plans to join the Day 3 share-back.

A sake brewery founded in Yame in 1717, now led by its 19th generation and known for the Shigemasu brand. It uses water from the underground flow of the Yabe River and Fukuoka rice, including Gin no Sato sake rice grown in Yame.

• The process from rice polishing to pressing
• Koji trays tracked with QR codes next to traditional methods
• JAS organic, a lens wind turbine, and sake brewed with wind and solar power

A 300 year old brewery that records its work digitally and runs on renewable energy, and a member of Yame City's council for exporting local products.