Nagano

How apples came

Nagano dates its apple growing from 1874, when the national industrial bureau, headed by Tanaka Yoshio of Iida, sent out young trees; from about 1897 to the end of the Taishō era apples spread across the prefecture¹. Within today’s Nagano city the first were planted at Mashima in 1875 or 1876, at Ōjōji and Miwa in 1879 and at Kyōwa and Kawayanagi around 1885. In 1879 Nakazawa Jigoemon, head of Mashima village, was given young trees of the new fruit by the prefecture’s industry section; he bought thirty more in Yokohama in 1884 and in 1896 planted 200 in an orchard of their own².

Farmers whose mulberry, grown for silkworms, was damaged again and again by frost and floods began to switch to apples; until 1887 these were trials, and afterwards the apples of Ōjōji were sold to pilgrims at the Zenkōji temple. At Akanuma, after the Chikuma river flooded in 1909 and 1910, riverside mulberry gave way to apples, which stood the water better, and the orchards spread south to Hoya².

When the world depression of the early Shōwa years sent sericulture into a slump, apples were promoted to replace it¹. In 1935 the village office of Samizu, now part of Iizuna, paid half the 10-sen price of each young tree; in the Pacific War apples were not counted a staple food, and the government banned new planting and ordered trees felled³. After the war Samizu’s orchards grew to 633 ha by 1963, and in 1968 the village picked 9,560 tonnes, about 1% of Japan’s crop, and was spoken of as the country’s leading apple village^3,4. From the late 1960s growers replaced Kokkō and Kōgyoku with Fuji and Tsugaru¹.

The prefecture’s fruit-tree experiment station at Suzaka has bred apples since 1970⁵. Japan’s orchards then rested on late Fuji and early Tsugaru, with no lasting mid-season variety, and in 1978 the station set out to breed one⁶. Shinano Sweet, from a 1978 cross of Fuji and Tsugaru, was registered in 1996, and Shinano Gold, from Golden Delicious × Senshu crossed in 1983, in 1999⁵. Because their young trees were sold beyond Nagano too, by 2014 Shinano Sweet covered 1,048 ha in 18 prefectures and Shinano Gold 706 ha in 13⁶; Shinano Gold is now grown commercially in Italy¹. The third of Nagano’s October apples, Akibae, was raised by Odagiri Takeo, a grower at Nakano, from Senshu × Tsugaru, and registered in 1993⁷. The station’s newer apples include Shinano Lip, registered in 2018 and ripe in August⁵.

How they’re grown

Nagano city’s weather station records 965.1 mm of precipitation and 1,969.9 hours of sunshine a year on its 1991–2020 normals, with a mean of 12.3 °C and 25.4 °C in August⁸. The prefecture puts the sweetness and colour of its apples down to long sunshine and wide swings between day and night, and, lying south of the other main apple regions, it picks earlier than Aomori and the rest of Tōhoku¹. About four-fifths of the apple land lies above 500 m, on mountain slopes and on the well-drained river terraces of the Chikuma and the Tenryū⁹; the station advises growing Shinano Sweet, which colours poorly in warm low ground, above about 500 m⁵.

Apples grow all over the prefecture, above all in the north from Nagano city to Suzaka and Yamanouchi and in the centre around Matsumoto and Azumino¹. They take 52% of Nagano’s fruit area. Fuji covers 55% of the apple orchards and Tsugaru 15%, and the prefecture’s own varieties, Akibae, Shinano Sweet, Shinano Gold and others, 24%. Ageing growers, poor old orchards and the switch to other crops are shrinking the area, which the prefecture’s plan expects to fall from 6,664 ha in 2024 to 6,155 ha in 2030¹⁰.

To save labour, Nagano took up “new dwarfing”, fruiting on small trees, ahead of the rest of Japan¹. Its plan aims to raise 100,000 feathered nursery trees a year on self-rooted M.9 stocks and to have 725 ha of high-density and new-dwarfing orchard by 2030. Warming brings sunburn and poor colour; the plan backs nets against hail and sun, and Shinano Hoppe, which colours well even in heat¹⁰.

What’s picked

Nagano harvested 106,400 tonnes of apples in 2025, 18% of Japan’s 577,400 tonnes and second only to Aomori, on provisional figures¹¹. They came from 6,640 ha of orchard, 6,410 ha of it bearing, and 99,000 tonnes were shipped¹². The prefecture’s own estimate for 2024 was 110,800 tonnes from 6,664 ha: Fuji 66,080 tonnes from 3,680 ha, Tsugaru 16,155 tonnes, Shinano Sweet 10,130, Akibae 7,292, Shinano Gold 3,654 and Shinano Lip 1,762¹⁰.

Picking runs from August to December, relayed between districts and varieties⁹. The prefecture’s calendar starts Tsugaru in late August, Akibae in early October, Shinano Sweet in mid-October, Shinano Gold in late October and Fuji in early November¹, and Shinano Lip ripens at Suzaka in mid to late August⁵. Shinano Gold stores well enough to stretch the selling season¹⁰.

On the table

Fuji is at its peak around 22 November, which JA Zen-Noh Nagano made Nagano’s apple day, reading its numbers as a play on the name Fuji, and registered in 2003¹³. Sharp varieties such as Kōgyoku go into apple pie and juice¹. The Ina valley in the south, long known for apples, has become a centre of craft cider, with eight cideries and more than ten farms making it in small batches¹⁴. Kōsaka ringo, the old native apple, ripe in mid-August, was sold at Zenkōji to pilgrims and as an offering for the Bon festival^3,4.

In April 1947 fire destroyed 73 ha of the centre of Iida and struck 17,800 people, more than half the population; no fire in post-war Japan has burned a larger area¹⁵. Pupils of Iida Higashi junior high school proposed planting apple trees in the fire-scarred town; the city agreed in March 1953, and that November the pupils planted 47 trees¹⁶ along the new firebreak road¹⁵. The first crop, in 1955, was 45 apples, of which only five were picked, the rest having fallen or been stolen; in 1956 the pupils gathered about 500 and gave them to the city’s welfare homes. They wanted “a beautiful town where red apples ripen, a town of beautiful hearts where nobody steals a single apple” (translated)¹⁶. The school’s pupils still tend the 400 m avenue, now the symbol of Iida¹⁵.

Notes

• Tanaka Yoshio, who headed the bureau that sent Nagano its first apple trees in 1874, was born in Iida¹.
• The prefecture repeats the story that the apple in Shimazaki Tōson’s poem “First Love” was the native wa-ringo rather than the modern fruit¹.
• Kōsaka ringo was saved in 1981 from scions of a last tree and became a natural monument in 2005⁴.
• Takane, the station’s first apple, registered in 1984, keeps so poorly that it is grown only above about 800 m, for direct sale⁵.

Where the sources disagree

• When apples came. The prefecture dates its apples from 1874¹; Nagano city’s history puts the first plantings in the city’s area in 1875 or 1876, and Nakazawa’s trees from the prefecture in 1879².
• The size of the crop. MAFF gives 106,400 tonnes for 2025¹¹; the prefecture estimates 110,800 tonnes for 2024¹⁰, and its produce page gives an undated 150,000 tonnes, about a fifth of Japan’s¹. This entry follows MAFF.
• Akibae’s season. Its registration record has it ripening in early September at Nakano, a little after Tsugaru⁷; the prefecture lists it from early October¹.
• December. The prefecture’s brand site says picking runs into December⁹; its variety calendar starts Fuji in early November and gives no end¹.
• Elevation. The four-fifths above 500 m is the prefecture’s figure, undated⁹; no survey of orchard heights was found.