Key takeaways
- Potato, corn, and wheat create Biei's famous patchwork. Each crop's colour shifts through the seasons, painting the rolling hills in gold, green, and purple.
- The couple from a 1970s car commercial became iconic. Their tree still stands on the hillside, recognisable from the coach window as you pass through Biei.
- Named after the cigarette brand featured in its own advertisement, this landmark tree has drawn photographers and visitors for decades seeking the perfect shot.
- Ancient glaciers and volcanic activity sculpted Hokkaido's terrain, creating the distinctive gentle hills that make Biei's agricultural landscape so visually striking.
- Elevated vantage points reveal the full scale of the patchwork below. Each season transforms the vista, from spring pastels to autumn warmth and winter snow.
How Glaciers and Volcanoes Created Biei's Striped Hills
Biei's distinctive patchwork landscape is the result of two powerful geological forces that shaped Hokkaido over millennia. During the last ice age, glaciers carved through the region, leaving behind undulating terrain with gentle slopes and valleys. As these glaciers retreated, they deposited layers of volcanic ash and sediment across the hills, creating the foundation for the fertile soil that defines the area today. Simultaneously, volcanic activity from nearby mountains enriched the earth with minerals, making Biei an ideal location for intensive agriculture.
The rolling topography you see from the Furano to Biei by car route reveals this ancient history in every curve and ridge. The hills rise and fall in a pattern that follows the glacial movements of thousands of years ago, while the volcanic contributions created the dark, nutrient-rich earth that allows farmers to grow such vibrant crops. This combination of geological events transformed what could have been a flat plain into one of Japan's most visually striking agricultural regions, where the landscape itself tells the story of Hokkaido's dramatic past.
The Crop Rotation Behind the Rainbow Stripes
Each colored stripe covering Biei's hills represents a different cultivated crop, rotated annually by local farmers to maintain soil health and maximize harvests. Bright purple waves come from lavender fields that bloom from July through August, drawing visitors seeking the distinctive fragrance and delicate flowers. Golden yellows emerge from sunflower plantations that peak in late summer, their massive heads turning to follow the sun across the sky. Deep greens indicate potato and cabbage crops, while soft pinks and whites signal the flowering periods of other seasonal vegetables.
The rotation system ensures that no single crop depletes the volcanic soil, a practice refined over generations of farming in this region. Spring brings fresh plantings of beans and peas in vibrant lime tones, while autumn transitions showcase the harvest colors of grains and root vegetables. This agricultural choreography means the hills transform throughout the year, presenting an entirely different palette of colors with each season. Photographers and tourists time their visits around these color cycles, each month offering a unique interpretation of Biei's natural canvas painted by human cultivation and seasonal change.
Gold wheat and purple flower fields stripe the rolling hills of Biei
Ken and Mary: The Tree That Became a Legend
In the 1970s, a single larch tree standing alone in a Biei field became an unexpected celebrity after appearing in a Japanese television commercial for a cigarette brand. The advertisement featured a young couple named Ken and Mary, and the iconic solitary tree in their pastoral setting captured the imagination of viewers across Japan. The location became known simply as Ken and Mary Tree, and it transformed from an anonymous landmark into one of Hokkaido's most visited attractions. Tourists began making pilgrimages to photograph themselves at the exact spot where the commercial was filmed, turning a humble farm tree into a symbol of Hokkaido's romantic landscape.
The tree's fame demonstrated how media could reshape tourism and cultural perception of a rural region. Its popularity inspired other commercials and films to use Biei's landscape as a backdrop, further cementing the area's reputation as a photographer's paradise. The Ken and Mary Tree stood resilient through decades of visitors, rain, snow, and changing seasons, until it eventually weakened and had to be replanted with a younger specimen to preserve the legacy. Today, the site remains a pilgrimage point for those seeking to recreate the exact scene from that pivotal advertisement, proving that even a single tree can capture the heart of a nation.
Seven Stars Tree and the Commercial That Made It Famous
Following the success of the Ken and Mary Tree, another larch became a star when it appeared in a 1976 commercial for Seven Stars cigarettes. Located on a hillside with a commanding view across Biei's patchwork fields, this tree offered photographers a different perspective than its predecessor. The Seven Stars Tree stands on higher ground, allowing visitors to capture sweeping vistas of the colored crop stripes stretching toward distant mountains. The commercial's artistic cinematography highlighted the tree's elegant form against the backdrop of Hokkaido's most photogenic landscape, cementing its place in the region's tourism mythology.
The Seven Stars Tree reinforced a pattern that would define Biei for decades to come: the power of visual media to elevate natural landmarks into must-see destinations. Both trees demonstrated that Biei possessed something rare and commercially valuable: a landscape so visually compelling that even a single tree within it could become newsworthy. These commercials introduced millions of Japanese viewers to Biei's existence and aesthetic appeal, transforming a quiet agricultural region into a destination that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. The trees became cultural symbols, their images reproduced in guidebooks, postcards, and social media for generations to come.
Why Photographers Return Through Every Season
Biei's appeal to photographers lies in its radical seasonal transformations, with each month offering entirely different colors, light qualities, and atmospheric conditions. Spring photographers seek the tender greens of newly planted fields and the softness of morning mist rising from the valleys. Summer brings intense colors as lavender and sunflower fields reach their peak, with long daylight hours allowing for extended shooting sessions during the golden hours at dawn and dusk. Autumn transforms the landscape with warm yellows, oranges, and browns as crops mature and weather patterns shift, while winter blankets the striped hills in snow, revealing the underlying topography through a monochrome lens.
Professional and amateur photographers visit Biei repeatedly throughout the year because each season demands different technical approaches and yields distinct aesthetic results. The varying angles of the sun create different shadow patterns across the hills, while changing weather brings fog, clouds, and storms that dramatically alter visibility and mood. Specific vantage points like the Furano lookout areas provide elevated perspectives that emphasize the geometric precision of the crop patterns, creating compositions that would be impossible from lower elevations. The region's consistent commitment to agricultural patchwork farming ensures that the landscape maintains its photogenic qualities year-round, making Biei a destination that rewards multiple visits and seasonal returns.
The Journey From Furano to Biei and Viewing the Landscape
The drive from Furano to Biei by car takes approximately 30 minutes and itself offers numerous photo opportunities as you climb toward higher elevations. The route gradually reveals how the landscape transitions from Furano's floral displays to Biei's agricultural patchwork, with several roadside viewpoints allowing you to pause and appreciate the changing perspective. As you gain altitude, the individual crop fields become more visible, and the geometric precision of the rotation system becomes apparent. The journey culminates at the elevated lookout points that provide panoramic views across dozens of square kilometers of striped fields.
From the Furano lookout points and Biei's elevated vantage spots, the full scope of the agricultural system becomes visible, with individual fields creating a grid-like pattern that stretches toward distant mountains. These viewpoints are specifically designed for photographers, offering railings, parking areas, and often multiple angles for capturing different compositions. The perspective from these heights reveals how glacial sculpting created the gentle rolling terrain that makes the crop stripes so visually dramatic. Standing at these vantage points, you understand why both professional photographers and casual visitors make this journey repeatedly, as no two visits yield identical lighting, weather, or seasonal conditions.
Making Memories in Hokkaido's Most Colorful Region
Visiting Biei and its famous trees creates lasting memories that connect you to decades of Japanese cultural history, agricultural heritage, and artistic inspiration. The landscape's evolution from anonymous farming region to international photography destination illustrates how beauty, when captured and shared through media, can transform tourism and cultural perception. Walking through the fields, standing beneath the Ken and Mary or Seven Stars trees, and photographing the colored stripes from elevated viewpoints creates personal connections to this unique place. The experience combines natural beauty, human cultivation, geological history, and commercial nostalgia into a single destination.
The Biei patchwork serves as a reminder that agricultural landscapes are dynamic, beautiful, and worthy of appreciation and protection. Each visit reveals new details about how crops are rotated, how light changes with seasons, and how the underlying glacial topography shapes what grows where. Whether you visit during lavender season when purple dominates the hills or in winter when snow outlines the field boundaries, Biei offers visual experiences that justify its reputation as one of Hokkaido's premier destinations for landscape enthusiasts and photographers seeking to capture Japan's most colorful agricultural region.
