Past and Present of Tokai-mura (Tokai Village)
 
Tokia-mura isn't just another small village in the middle of nowhere. As it is facing to the Pacific Ocean, people lived here for a very long time. During the ground preparation stage for the 50GeV Ring of J-PARC, a settlement connected to a large salt farm of medieval time (Muramatsu-Shirane ruin) was discovered.


While the excavation of the ruin had held up the J-PARC construction, KEK organized a three-day field study for elementary school students with the help from the board of education. Kids had a grand time learning about their ancestors. Beside for this, about 60 ruins (~2000 years old) have been discovered in Tokai area.

These ruins tell interesting life style of the time. You will find many places far away from the ocean but have a name (Aokiga-Ura, Masaki-Ura and Hoso-Ura) that indicates a bay. This tells that ancient shore line was much closer. There are shrines and temples at these “-Ura” places indicating that they were there to protect the village from outside intruders. Muramatsuyama-Kokuzo-Do was constructed at 9th century, containing a Kokuzo statue believed to be curved by a famous leader of a Buddhism sect of the 11th century, Kobo-daishi, out of a drift wood.

Modern-day Tokai village was born in 1955 by amalgamating Muramatsu village and Ishigami village. The Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) founded their Tokai facility in 1957 which was the dawn of the nuclear power research of Japan. (JAERI became JAEA (Japan Atomic Energy Agency) in 2005 combining Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute.) Since then, numerous research institutes and development facilities have been built in Tokai, as well as in adjacent towns. About 36,000 people are living in Tokai including some 300 non-Japanese researchers. Under the leadership of the Mayor of the village, Mr. Tatsuya Murakami, Tokai village is setting a firm step forward to become an international research center of Japan, taking the opportunity of the starting of the J-PARC. Ibaraki prefecture also started a five-year action plan for internationalization of the whole district.

The ruins and researches are not all. There are festivals such as Cherry Blossom Festival, Summer Festival with fireworks, Sweet-potato Festival, and so forth. “Hitachi Seaside Park” is near by which is a huge seaside park with an amusement park, cycling courses, flower gardens and so forth. One of the biggest Rock music festival, “Rock in Japan”, is held at the park every summer and more than 100,000 people enjoys music.

Access to other places is not bad: it takes only 15 minutes from Tokai village to Mito city (the capital of Ibaraki prefecture) by train and 1.5 hours to Tokyo by express train. Between KEK (Tsukuba city) and JAEA (Tokai village), there is a commuter bus service with which it normally takes less than 1.5 hours.
 

The author Dr. Toshiya Otomo is a material scientist studying atomic structures of disordered materials with neutron scattering technique. He has been working at KEK neutron science facility since 1994. He is in the J-PARC project office of KEK working hard on J-PARC construction. main main main.