Maze is a small village isolated between several mountains to the west of the main Hida valley. It's about 12km from Hagiwara in northern Gero.
It's a beautiful area, but there are no supermarkets, and no conveniene stores. There's an onsen in the southern area with a few cafes, but that's 10km away, about the same distance from Hagiwara. This northern area is just an auxiliary neighborhood along the Maze river, which runs parallel to the Hida River. The Hida River valley was (and mostly is) the main transportation route from Nagoya and Gifu in the south to Takayama in the north, so it got a lot of traffic, and people could easily make a living selling to travelers.
Early settlers probably found the Maze area a haven of agriculture compared to the overcrowded areas along the Hida River. But the difficulty was getting up and over the mountains. 12km was the very long distance back in the day without any cars, paved roads, or tunnels.
After the war, two junior high schools were established in Maze village. Nakagiri Junior High School 中切中学校 was established in the above area, and Soujima Junior High School 総島中学校 was established in the south near that onsen. By 1961, both schools had a combined graduating class of 97 students. 22 years later, the graduating class had shrunk to only 27 students, so Soujima merged into Nakagiri which was renamed to Maze Junior High School 馬瀬中学校.
Today, it is owned by the Hojitsu Construction Company. The building is called Erin, and I think this office focuses on electrical power? It looked like they were doing some kind of power experiments in the gymnasium.
As the student numbers dwindled and dwindled, the school was closed in 2017. Their last graduating class was only 7 students with only 3 students the year prior. For the remaining students in Maze village, they must take the bus each day to Hagiwara South Junior High School. Maze Elementary School is still open and fully staffed, though. They continue to have around 6 students for each grade.
Maze Junior High School is one of the few schools to have closed in the Hida region since I started working here as a teacher. I began work in Takayama in 2013, and I knew the English teacher at Maze pretty well. We hung out a few times. (Here's a page of all the recently closed schools in Gero City.)
Maze is still pretty renowned today because of their yearly fireworks exhibition near the end of summer. People from all over Hida cause a huge traffic jam driving on the super narrow road to reach the small village.
Maze is also pretty renowned because of their strong history with Kendo. They were a lot of very strong Kendo practitioners in the village, and their junior high school team often won regional tournaments and sometimes prefectural tournaments, even though their numbers were low. After the school closed, Hagiwara South's kendo team jumped up the rankings because they had the support from Maze students.
While Maze has seen its extreme depopulation, it seems like it might be stable now. Even though this company moved into the junior high school and even defaced their stone monument, it does employ some of the folks in the village and those folks are able to cultivate their families. Although, I'm not really sure how many folks would want to move here. I'm sure property value is super low so you could buy a house for cheap. Also, maybe work at the company is good?
Maybe I'll try to come back for the fireworks this year.
