Furano. In a valley stretching
through Hokkaido's volcanic and mountainous heart, upon the Ishikari
River, resides this postcard-picture town at the exact geographic
centre of the island.
This is an agrarian region, and
on first impressions presents as idyllic a rural scene as you can
get. Tranquil, clean, hard-working, prosperous: from its origins as a
settlement site of immigrant Japanese homesteaders in the 1890s,
Furano has soared to fame as much as a tourist magnet for its
spectacular flower fields and ski slopes, as it has as an
agricultural engine churning out onions, carrots and melons by the
shipload.
I am unequipped to measure how
sustainable it is, or indeed how sustainable modern life in Hokkaido
is as a whole. But all impressions paint Furano as one of the most
successful endeavours to emerge from the long Japanese colonization
project, and one well suited to its most literal central location.
