Key takeaways
- The iconic zelkova that starred in a 1970s car advertisement became Japan's most visited tree, drawing pilgrims to Patchwork Road.
- A row of larch trees made famous by cigarette advertising transformed a functional farm shelter into an unexpected cultural landmark.
- Another celebrated windbreak that gained its name and reputation through tobacco marketing, now a recognizable symbol of the region.
- A photographer's image of Shirogane Blue Pond circulated worldwide through screens and media, making it essential viewing for travelers.
- Decades of heavy foot traffic damaged farmland and crops, prompting locals to request that visitors stay on roads to protect working agricultural areas.
When a Car Advert Made a Tree Famous
In 1972, a Japanese automobile commercial changed the landscape of Hokkaido forever. A couple drove a white Nissan Skyline down a rural road in Patchwork Road, a farming region south of Asahikawa known for its patchwork pattern of crop fields. One tree featured in that advertisement, a solitary poplar, became known as the Ken and Mary tree after the commercial's couple. The ad ran for years, and gradually tourists began seeking out that exact location to photograph it themselves. What started as a single exposure in a commercial became a pilgrimage site.
The farmers who worked the surrounding fields did not plan for this. Their quiet agricultural area, where fields of corn, wheat, potatoes, and other crops created natural geometric patterns across the landscape, suddenly attracted visitors. The Ken and Mary tree stood at the intersection of two farm roads, and by the 1980s, dozens and then hundreds of people arrived each year to stand where the actors had stood. The tree became less a landmark of farming life and more a monument to advertising power.
Tobacco Pack Designs Drive Tourism to the Fields
Through the 1970s and 1980s, the tobacco industry shaped Hokkaido's tourism landscape in ways few expected. Seven Stars, a popular cigarette brand, featured a lone conifer in one of its advertisement campaigns, and the tree gained its own following. Mild Seven, another major brand, marketed a windbreak of trees along a farm road in the same region. Neither brand owned the trees or the land, but their packaging turned specific trees and locations into destinations. Smokers collected these brands partly to see the images that had made them recognizable, and some travelled to Hokkaido to see the actual trees in person.
These marketing campaigns created a strange economy. Farmers suddenly found themselves stewards of unplanned tourist attractions. The Seven Stars tree and the Mild Seven windbreak trees became as well-known as any official monument, yet they sat on private farmland. The trees had always been there, doing their agricultural work: the Seven Stars tree stood alone, marking field boundaries; the Mild Seven trees formed a protective barrier against wind. Tobacco advertisements had simply revealed them to the world.
A solitary tree frames the rolling patchwork of Patchwork Road's famous fields
A Photographer's Blue Pond Image Circles the Globe
Shirogane Blue Pond, located near Biei, had existed for decades as a quiet body of water created by a dam on the Shirogane River. In the 1980s, a photographer captured the pond at the right moment, when minerals in the water created an otherworldly shade of blue, and the surrounding mountains and dead trees reflected perfectly on the surface. That single image was distributed internationally through travel magazines, websites, and eventually social media. By the 1990s and 2000s, Blue Pond had become one of the most photographed locations in Hokkaido.
The photograph's global reach far exceeded anything a tobacco advertisement could achieve. Tour operators began routing visitors through the region specifically to see Blue Pond. Shikisai No Oka, a flower garden also in the area, benefited from the same surge of interest. The Blue Pond image did what the Ken and Mary tree and the tobacco advertisements had begun: it transformed a rural farming district into a major tourist destination. What had been working landscape became a gallery of natural phenomena that existed primarily to be seen and photographed.
Television Drama Cements Furano's Place in the National Imagination
In the 1990s, a Japanese television drama filmed in Furano, a city near the Patchwork Road region, aired nationally. The show featured the landscape prominently, showcasing the flower fields, the patchwork farms, and the small-town atmosphere. Viewers across Japan saw Furano not as an agricultural centre but as a romantic, picturesque destination. The drama did more to promote the region than any single advertisement or photograph. Where the Ken and Mary tree had drawn car enthusiasts and the Seven Stars tree had drawn collectors, the television drama drew families and holiday-makers.
Furano's population and economy shifted around this visibility. Hotels, restaurants, and gift shops multiplied. The regional agricultural identity remained, but it now existed alongside a tourism identity. Visitors came to walk through the same fields and town streets they had watched on television. The distinction between the place as it functioned and the place as it appeared on screens began to blur. The drama had essentially rebranded Furano, not through any official effort, but through the simple act of showing it to millions of people.
The Christmas Tree and the Limits of Popularity
A conifer known as the Christmas Tree, another individual tree in the Patchwork Road region, gained recognition after appearing in travel guides and online. Like the Ken and Mary tree and the Seven Stars tree before it, it became a photography destination. Visitors trampled the surrounding farmland to reach it, their feet compacting soil, disrupting irrigation lines, and damaging crops. The tree itself, though sturdy, existed at the centre of an ever-widening circle of agricultural damage.
Eventually, the farmer who owned the land made a difficult decision: the Christmas Tree was cut down. The tree had not died of disease or age. It was felled because its fame had become unsustainable. The felling sent a signal through the farming community. Trees that brought tourists were not necessarily beneficial. The cost in lost crops, damaged fields, and hours spent managing visitors often exceeded any indirect economic gain from tourism. The Christmas Tree's removal was not widely publicized as a statement, but farmers understood what it meant: there were limits to how much publicity a farming landscape could absorb.
When Pilgrims Become an Agricultural Problem
By the 2000s, the cumulative effect of tourism on Patchwork Road and surrounding regions had become visible to the farmers. Visitors stepped off roads and into active fields. They parked on verges that supported irrigation systems. They photographed from angles that required crossing planted rows. What began with a single tree in a car commercial had grown into a pattern of behaviour that threatened the economic viability of the farms themselves. The farmers began asking visitors to stay on marked paths and respect field boundaries, placing signs in multiple languages.
The request went further than simple etiquette. It was a plea from the people who actually worked the land, who depended on every section of it for their livelihoods. The patchwork pattern that photographers found beautiful was not decorative; it was the result of crop rotation and planning. Fields that looked scenic from a distance were workplaces. The tension between tourism and agriculture had become explicit. Farmers could not prevent tourists from coming, but they could ask them to move through the landscape with awareness that this was not a park or museum, but a working agricultural region where decisions about land use affected real households.
Understanding the Patchwork's Real Pattern
The patchwork that made Hokkaido famous consists of practical crop planning, not artistic design. Farmers rotate different crops through different fields each year to manage soil health, prevent pest buildup, and diversify their incomes. One year a field might grow corn, the next year potatoes, the next year wheat or beans. The colour variations that make the landscape visually striking to tourists are the incidental result of these agricultural decisions. A field of green corn beside a field of golden wheat beside a field of brown fallow soil creates the patchwork effect that appears in countless photographs.
When visitors understand this, the request to stay on marked paths becomes more meaningful. The farmers are not trying to hide beauty or prevent access; they are trying to preserve the agricultural system that creates the beauty in the first place. The Ken and Mary tree, the Seven Stars tree, the Mild Seven windbreak, the Christmas Tree, Blue Pond, and the flower fields of Shikisai No Oka all exist within this working landscape. Tourism has brought economic opportunity to the region, but it has also created pressure that farming communities must continuously negotiate. The patchwork pattern is real; respecting how it is made is part of visiting responsibly.
