Shirakawa-go is a village of steep thatched farmhouses that vanish to the eaves under snow each winter. The roofs are woven from timber and rope without a single nail. Every one of them faces the same way, north to south, so wind slips over them and the sun works down both slopes to dry the thatch. They are pitched like two hands pressed together in prayer, which is what the name gassho-zukuri means. The oldest have stood for more than 250 years in Ogimachi, the largest hamlet, strung along the Sho River deep in the central mountains. These are lived-in homes rather than a museum, and a few of them take in overnight guests.
From the Shiroyama viewpoint on the hill above, the roofs scatter across the valley floor like a village in miniature. The seasons keep rewriting that view: flooded rice paddies mirror the roofs in spring, run emerald in summer, and give way to red mountainsides in autumn. Winter is the transformation. Snow piles metres deep, and on only a handful of evenings each year the houses are lit from within and the whole settlement glows against the dark. The rest of the time you walk the narrow lanes between clear water channels, amid woodsmoke and the sound of running water, and step inside houses like the Wada to find soot-blackened beams and a broad attic overhead. Shirakawa-go and neighbouring Gokayama are one of the last clusters of villages where this mountain farming life still stands.