Lake Towada: The Sacred Caldera Lake 40km from the Tomb of Christ
The Lake
Lake Towada (十和田湖) is a volcanic caldera lake sitting at 400 meters elevation on the border of Aomori and Akita prefectures, approximately 40 kilometers west of Shingo Village. It is one of the deepest lakes in Japan — 327 meters at its deepest point — and one of the clearest, its water a blue-green that shifts register with the season and the weather. It is also one of the two most sacred places in Aomori Prefecture.
The lake formed roughly 13,000 years ago in the collapsed summit of a volcanic complex. It has no natural fish — species were introduced artificially in the Meiji period. The surrounding forest is old-growth beech and oak. In autumn the canopy turns and the tree line reflects in the caldera surface without distortion.
The Dragon Legend
The foundational story of the lake is 1,200 years old. A Buddhist monk named Nansobo arrived at the caldera in the late 8th century and, through a prolonged act of ascetic practice, transformed himself into an azure dragon. He descended into the lake to claim it as his domain.
This provoked a conflict. The lake was already occupied by Hachirotaro, a dragon of enormous power who had ruled the caldera waters for generations. The two fought for seven days. The battle was so violent that the mountains around the lake shook and the water turned. Nansobo won. Hachirotaro was driven out and reportedly fled north, eventually coming to rest in the shallows of what is now Lake Hachiro in Akita Prefecture.
Nansobo was enshrined at the bottom of the lake as Seiryu Daigongen — the Great Azure Dragon Deity. In the early 1900s, divers recovered ancient swords, bronze coins, and bronze mirrors from the lake bed. The objects are preserved and attributed to the shrines and votive offerings of centuries of worship. The lake floor holds things.
Official JNTO overview of Lake Towada and surrounding area.
The Fortune
Towada Shrine, on the lake's southern shore, practices a form of fortune-telling specific to the site. A special paper called oyori-gami is purchased at the shrine and written with a wish or a question. The paper is folded and thrown into the lake.
If it sinks, the wish is granted. If it floats, it is not. The logic is the inverse of standard paper — ordinarily, paper floats. The oyori-gami is treated with a compound that makes it water-soluble. When a wish is absorbed into the sacred water and disappears into the caldera, it has been received.
The shrine occupies a peninsula on the lake's southern end, accessible by foot from the Towada visitor area. The cedar trees around it are several hundred years old.
Towada Art Center
Approximately 35 kilometers from Shingo, in Towada City, stands the Towada Art Center — designed by the architectural firm SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) and opened in 2008. The building is low, white, and composed of interconnected glass-walled gallery boxes. From the street it reads as almost invisible.
The permanent collection includes Ron Mueck's four-meter-tall sculpture of an elderly woman, seated and rendered in hyperrealist detail at a scale that removes any comfortable distance. Yoko Ono's Wish Tree invites visitors to tie paper messages to its branches. Do Ho Suh's suspended fabric figures hang in mid-stride, translucent, between floors. Chiharu Shiota has installed a red-thread boat — thousands of threads extending from a wooden hull like a web catching the air.
The outdoor plaza holds additional permanent works: a Flower Horse and a Giant Ant at a scale that does not resolve as art until you are already standing next to them. The art center is operated as a community facility, with free admission to the outdoor works and a modest entry fee for the galleries.
Current exhibitions, hours, and admission prices.
The Statue of Maidens
On the lakeside promenade near the Towada visitor center stands the Statue of Maidens (乙女の像), two nude bronze women facing each other across a narrow gap. The sculptor is Kotaro Takamura, one of the defining figures of 20th-century Japanese poetry and sculpture. He completed the work in 1953. It was his last major piece.
The women are widely understood to be modeled on Takamura's wife, Chieko, who suffered a severe mental illness and died in a psychiatric facility in 1938. He wrote about her for the rest of his life. The sculpture is one of the most visited landmarks in Aomori Prefecture.
The piece has an unusual optical property: from any angle around the statue — front, back, side, oblique — the women appear to be making direct eye contact with the viewer. The effect is consistent and has been documented by multiple visitors. No single explanation for it has become standard. The faces were carved to see, and they see from every direction.
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