Yokote Natto: Akita’s Other Birthplace of Natto, Natto-jiru and the 2027 Kamakura

Japanese Food Culture · Akita

By Nobu · A researched guide, not a trip report: I have not been to Yokote yet. Everything below was checked on 6 October 2026 against Yokote City, the Yokote City Tourism Association, the Agriculture Ministry, JR East and Ugo Kotsu timetables, and the monument’s own inscription.

Yokote, a snow-country city in southern Akita, has its own “birthplace of natto” stone (納豆発祥の地). It stands in Kanazawa Park, on the hill held to be the stockade where the Later Three Years’ War ended in 1087, and its story stars the same samurai as Mito’s: Minamoto no Yoshiie. Farmers ordered to hand over boiled soybeans packed them into straw bales in a hurry, and a few days later the beans smelled and pulled into threads. Both towns tell this as a legend, and so will I. The reasons to make the long trip are around the stone: natto-jiru, the natto miso soup that people in this part of Akita look forward to every winter, and the kamakura snow-hut festival, which falls on 12–13 February in 2027. One warning before you plan February around the monument: Yokote City lists Kanazawa Park as closed in winter.

What Yokote claims, in its own words

The Later Three Years’ War (後三年の役, 1083–1087) was fought across the Yokote Basin. Yoshiie, then governor of Mutsu, took sides in a feud inside the Kiyohara clan and in 1087 starved out Kiyohara Iehira and Takehira at the Kanazawa stockade. Yokote City’s heritage pages date the fall of the stockade to the 14th day of the 11th month of that year. The winner on Yoshiie’s side, Kiyohara (later Fujiwara) no Kiyohira, went on to found the Fujiwara dynasty of Hiraizumi, which is why the city calls Yokote “the roots of Hiraizumi culture”.

The natto story is set during that campaign. The Yokote City Tourism Association tells it like this: Yoshiie had the farmers hand over boiled soybeans; they had no containers ready in time, so they packed the beans into straw bales; a few days later the beans gave off an aroma and drew threads; someone tasted them, found them surprisingly good, and the farmers began making natto themselves and passed it down. The stone in Kanazawa Park carries the same story, and the Agriculture Ministry’s regional food database repeats it, adding that Yoshiie’s side was struggling for supplies.

Read the endings. The tourism association closes with to iimasu, “it is said”. The inscription closes with to iu, which means the same. Yokote’s tourism promotion body says natto is “also said to have originated” in the city. No one in Yokote is claiming proof.

“[…] During this war, the farmers were made to hand over boiled beans packed in straw bales. After some days the beans gave off an aroma and began to draw threads. Surprised, they tried eating them, found them unexpectedly good, and took them as food. The farmers, too, learned of this, made it themselves and passed it on to later generations, it is said.”
From the inscription on the stone in Kanazawa Park, translated by Nobu

Yokote has three versions, not one

Yokote City’s own “natto legend course” lists three, each tied to a different place in the modern city.

Two birthplaces: Mito and Yokote side by side

Mito in Ibaraki is the town most people connect with natto, and our Mito natto day trip covers it stop by stop. Its legend and Yokote’s are two scenes from the same campaign. In Mito’s version Yoshiie is marching north to the war in 1083. In Yokote’s he is at the battlefields.

How to see the monument in Kanazawa Park

Kanazawa here is a district of Yokote, not the city of Kanazawa in Ishikawa; you will also see it written Kanezawa, as in the name of its shrine, Kanezawa Hachimangu. Yokote City puts the district about 7 km north of its main city hall. The park sits on the hill most likely to have been the Kanazawa stockade; the city’s excavations found medieval castle remains rather than proof of the 11th-century stockade, and the hilltop, as Dewa Kanazawa Castle ruins, was made a National Historic Site in February 2026. The Agriculture Ministry and the city both place the natto stone inside the park.

Near the park is the Gosannen War Kanazawa Museum (後三年合戦金沢資料館), the one indoor stop in the area. It shows a copy of the painted Gosannen Kassen Ekotoba scroll made by Ebisuya Nanzan, a local man of letters, finds from the stockade sites, and armour and treasures deposited by Kanezawa Hachimangu. It opens 9:00–17:00 (last entry 16:30) and closes on Mondays (the next day when Monday is a holiday), on the day after any national holiday, and from 29 December to 3 January. Entry is the ¥100 four-venue ticket described in the kamakura section below.

The stone is further on. On the city’s natto-legend map, the route drawn from the museum to its Kanazawa Park marker is about 1.5 km of road, and the park’s own page describes a winding slope up to the top.

Fitting it into the 2027 kamakura weekend

The kamakura are snow huts, about three metres high, with an altar to the water god inside. Children sit in them and invite passers-by in with “haitte tanse” (please come in) and “ogande tanse” (please pray to the water god), offering amaeko, a sweet rice drink, and mochi. The city says the custom is about 450 years old.

Older English pages still give the old dates. The English text on Yokote City’s own site, written by the Japan Tourism Agency and last updated in 2022, still says 15, 16 and 17 February. The city’s Japanese page, updated in February 2026, gives 12–13 February for 2027.

For a two-day visit, arrive on Friday afternoon, see Kamakura-kan, and walk the kamakura sites in the evening. On Saturday morning take the bus to the Kanazawa museum and, if you booked it, have natto-jiru at Asagiku, the restaurant in the next section. In past years the riverbed below Janosaki Bridge has been covered in mini kamakura on festival nights (the city’s 2022 English page describes it, and the photo above is from 2025), but the association’s current venue list does not mention it, so check locally that it is lit on the 13th before you plan Saturday evening around it.

Stay in central Yokote. Kamakura-kan and the city hall festival site are about ten minutes’ walk from the station, the WARP airport shuttle stops at the station’s west exit, and the Kanazawa buses leave from Yokote Bus Terminal. On festival nights you will be walking back after 21:00 in the snow, so a hotel near the station makes sense.

Natto-jiru: the soup that goes with the legend

Natto-jiru (納豆汁) is miso soup with natto ground into it. The Agriculture Ministry’s regional food database lists it as a dish of inland southern Akita, which is Yokote’s area, and of the Nakanone district of Yurihonjō. The recipe it reproduces, from a cookbook by Akita’s rural life research groups, simmers taro and fried tofu in niboshi stock, adds salted warabi bracken and saku (a wild herb) soaked out, rehydrated dried zenmai, mushrooms and tofu, seasons with miso, then stirs in natto that has been ground smooth in a suribachi mortar, without letting the pot boil again. Spring onion and salted mustard greens go on top. The ministry says the ground natto gives the soup body and a rounder taste.

Three details from the ministry explain why it is a winter food. Much of the filling is mushrooms and mountain vegetables picked in spring and autumn, salted, and soaked out when the soup is made; because that takes work, it became a dish for weddings, funerals and other special days. Inland southern Akita eats natto-jiru at New Year where most of Japan eats zōni, cooking a big pot and reheating it over the first three days. And in winter, supermarkets set up corners selling natto-jiru ingredients. In Japanese dictionaries natto-jiru is a winter season word for haiku, and the oldest example Nihon Kokugo Daijiten quotes is a letter from 1440.

Where to taste it, or buy local natto

I can point you to one place in Yokote with a live official listing. Asagiku (朝菊), a Yokote yakisoba restaurant at 9-12 Tanaka-machi, lists natto-jiru with imo-no-ko-jiru (taro soup) and shio-kujira (salted whale) as country dishes, by reservation. The tourism association’s listing, last updated in 2021, gives 11:30–14:00 and 17:30–22:00, irregular closing days and phone 0182-33-4131. Ring ahead, in Japanese or through your hotel. Omagari, where the Komachi route changes trains, has gone further: the ministry says the Omagari Chamber of Commerce began promoting natto-jiru as the town’s dish in 2008 and more than ten restaurants now serve it as certified shops. I could not open a current list of those shops, so I am not naming any.

For natto itself, the local name is Yamada Foods, which sells under the Ohayo Natto brand. It started in 1954 as the Kanazawa Natto factory in the former town of Kanazawa, Senboku district, a town later divided between Yokote and Misato, so wider than today’s Kanazawa district of Yokote; its head office is now in neighbouring Misato, and its Yūshin-an factory is in Yokote’s Hiraka district. Its pages present Yūshin-an as a factory with access details, and I found no visitor hours or tours there, so buy the packs in a shop instead. One of its lines is kizami natto, chopped even finer than hikiwari. Fresh natto needs a fridge; for the flight home, dried natto travels better, as the natto guide explains, and Yamada Foods also makes freeze-dried natto. Kyoto’s temple natto is another thing again: dried, salty and string-less — see Daitokuji and Ikkyuji temple natto.

Getting to Yokote from Tokyo

On the Komachi route you change at Omagari, the fireworks town; our Omagari fireworks guide covers it. The Komachi and the Ou Line are both JR, so a rail pass covers the train legs but not the bus to Kanazawa. A national pass only pays off if Yokote is one stop on a longer route, and my JR Pass vs individual tickets comparison does the maths. For a February trip, leave slack for snow delays; my heavy-snow travel guide covers delays, footwear and buffer time.

Yokote in other seasons

Outside the winter closure you can walk up to the natto stone, and Kanazawa Park is known for its cherry blossoms and azaleas. Akita has other things to plan around too: spring at the Lake Shusenko submerged forest and early August at the Akita Kantō Festival in Akita City. If Yokote is one stop on a longer rail trip around Tohoku, that is when a pass starts to pay for itself.

Yokote natto: short answers

Yokote is a long way to go for a stone in a park, and in February you may not even reach it. It is still a good place to understand the natto story, which is set in a winter siege with a hungry army and straw bales of beans, in a valley that still makes natto-jiru at New Year. In February the kamakura and the soup are the reasons to go; the monument is a trip for the green season.

Sources