Umaji Village

Umaji has about a thousand people, is ninety-six per cent forest, and is one of the best-known village brands in Japan. It got there through yuzu. In the 1980s the agricultural cooperative decided that selling raw fruit was a losing proposition and started processing instead — a ponzu in 1986, then in 1988 a honey-and-yuzu drink called Gokkun Umajimura, sold with photographs of the village itself and a deliberately rural voice. It has been in production for over thirty years.

The village is up the Yasuda river in the eastern mountains, was a forestry settlement served by a now-dismantled forest railway, and has an onsen, a cooperative processing plant that can be visited, and not much else. It is the standard case study in Japanese regional revitalisation, and it is also simply a very pretty valley with the smell of citrus in it.