Haruki Murakami · Hokkaido

Following Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase to Hokkaido's Bifuka and Shibetsu: A Literary Travel Guide

Trace the real Hokkaido towns behind Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase — from the remote village widely believed to have inspired its fictional 'Twelve Falls Town' to the sheep-farming town where Murakami did his own research.

A Wild Sheep Chase (羊をめぐる冒険, Hitsuji o Meguru Bōken) is Haruki Murakami's 1982 novel, the book where the strange, hard-to-classify blend of noir plot and quiet surrealism he'd become known for first fully clicked into place. An unnamed narrator is drawn into a search for a mind-controlling sheep with a star-shaped mark on its back, last seen somewhere in the mountains of Hokkaido, in a village the novel calls Junitaki-cho — "Twelve Falls Town." Junitaki-cho is fictional, but Murakami built it out of a real trip: in October 1981 he traveled around Hokkaido researching actual sheep farming, talking to real breeders and checking local government records before writing the book.

Stop 1: Niupu, Bifuka Town — the village widely believed to be Junitaki-cho

No single place is officially confirmed as Junitaki-cho, but Niupu (仁宇布), a remote district of Bifuka Town in northern Hokkaido, is the most consistently cited candidate. The novel places Junitaki-cho 260 km from Sapporo by road — close to Niupu's real distance — and describes a famously unprofitable branch railway line running through it, matching Bifuka's own former Bisai Line (美幸線), notorious in its day as the least profitable line in the entire national rail network before its 1985 closure. The area's real "Sixteen Falls" (仁宇布の冷水・十六滝) — a cluster of 16 waterfalls fed by a spring cold enough to stay near 6°C even in summer — is also often pointed to as the likely source of the novel's "Twelve Falls" name.

Where Niupu Station once stood, a rail-bike park called Torokko Okoku Bifuka now lets visitors pedal small trolleys along a preserved stretch of the old line through the forest.

• Getting there: About 30 minutes by car from JR Bifuka Station; a reservation-based community bus also serves the area, but a car is far more practical.
• Good to know: The Sixteen Falls and cold spring are about a 10-minute drive from the trolley park. A small cheese workshop near the trolley park keeps its own grazing sheep — not a confirmed literary site, but a fitting coincidence given the novel's subject.

Stop 2: Shibetsu — where Murakami actually did his research

Rather than inventing Hokkaido sheep farming from nothing, Murakami went and looked at it: his October 1981 research trip took him to Shibetsu, a city with a long-standing sheep-farming industry, where he talked to real breeders and checked municipal records before writing the novel. Shibetsu still leans into that identity today at Hitsuji to Kumo no Oka ("Hill of Sheep and Clouds"), a hillside tourist farm where visitors can see dozens of rare sheep breeds from around the world grazing with a view over the surrounding countryside.

• Getting there: About 15 minutes by car from JR Shibetsu Station; no direct public transit runs to the farm itself.
• Good to know: Best visited from late spring through autumn, when the sheep are out on the hillside pastures rather than indoors for winter.

Practical travel notes

• Best time to visit: Late spring to early autumn — Hokkaido's mountain roads and the Shibetsu sheep pastures are both at their best outside the snow season.
• Base yourself in: Asahikawa is the most practical hub for reaching both Bifuka and Shibetsu, each under two hours away by car.
• Language: both towns are small and rural; expect Japanese-only signage outside the main tourist facilities.
• The book itself: the standard English translation, titled A Wild Sheep Chase, is by Alfred Birnbaum.