History

The original rest stop at Karamatsuzawa was a single-room timber hut raised in 1974 by the agricultural cooperative beside Prefectural Route 261, then the only paved route over the pass. It offered a charcoal stove, a kettle, a pickle stand staffed on market days, and a bench arrangement that regular drivers describe as never since improved upon. The route bus stopped there without a scheduled stop existing, a practice the operating company tolerated for decades without acknowledging. The cooperative's ledger records thirty years of small repairs, none exceeding ¥60,000, and a 1988 resolution formally thanking the hut itself, which carried without discussion and appears in the minutes between two items about fertilizer.

In 2000 the town won designation for a roadside station under the national michi-no-eki program, contingent on modern facilities: bus parking, barrier-free toilets, a twenty-four-hour rest area. The promotion council's first plan, adopted 9–2 in March 2000, called for demolishing the hut. A petition of 1,164 signatures — in a town of 3,900 — arrived within the month, along with a letter from the route bus drivers' association. The revised plan, adopted 11–0 that June, enlarged the new building by one hall and moved the hut indoors: forty meters on steel rollers, intact with stove and kettle, performed in a single morning by a contractor whose usual commissions are the relocation of shrines.

The Memorial Annex opened with the station on April 27, 2002. Total construction cost ¥310 million, of which the annex hall accounts for ¥64 million and the relocation ¥9.2 million, figures posted beside the entrance at the auditor's request. Inside, the hut stands as it did on its final afternoon: the kettle on the cold stove, the wall calendar showing March 2002, the drink vending machine in place but unplugged, its successor outside selling the same items at current prices. The pickle stand resumes operation inside the hut on national holidays, staffed by the cooperative on a rotation that has never needed to be posted, and the benches remain available for their original purpose.

The arrangement has required maintenance in both directions. Heavy snow in the winter of 2005–06 deflected the annex roof, and the ¥5.5 million repair was complicated by the engineer's finding that the hut beneath had been built for loads the annex had not; the council chairman's remark to that effect was reported in the prefectural paper and is no longer made. Humidity control for the hut's cedar shingles was added in 2009 with a ¥2.1 million heritage subsidy, and the annex now maintains, per the panel at its door, 'the climate of a mild October, indefinitely.' The hall is mopped nightly around, but never under, the exhibit.

Local Legends

The hut's wall calendar officially remains at March 2002, but several visitors report having seen it showing the current month. Station staff state that no one is assigned to the calendar, which is not the same as a denial.

The old station's cat moved itself to the new building within a week of opening and never entered the annex again. Its successors have observed the same policy, which staff describe as the cats' own arrangement.

Drivers maintain that rice balls taste better eaten on the hut's bench than on the identical benches outside. The cooperative attributes this to the bench, the light, and the roof, in that order.

The Controversy

In 2004 a prefectural audit questioned whether the annex hall's floor area should be reported inclusive or exclusive of the hut it contains, since subsidy rates differ for exhibition space and preserved structures, and the hut is both. The query ran fourteen months, produced a site visit by three officials who were photographed having tea inside the exhibit, and closed with a finding that the station is 'one building containing one exhibit which is a building,' reportable as a single line. Both floor areas now appear on the sign outside, with an asterisk.

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