According to the Shirakawa village board of education, this was the first re-thatching in Shirakawa-go in five years ... Craftsmen began working from late April to remove the old roof.

Located in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture, Shirakawa-go is a village full of old-fashioned houses with thatched roofs - and a registered World Heritage Site. The roofs are steeply slanted ...

Snow fell intermittently on the Hida region of Gifu Prefecture throughout January. In Shirakawa-go, a village with about 100 traditional gassho-zukuri thatched roof houses, around 30 centimeters ...

We must stop this. But how? Shirakawa the nurse keeps agonizing over this dilemma. —The Asahi Shimbun, April 22 Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics ...