Chichibu's red bridge, where Anohana meets the actual riverbank

The Arakawa river runs low and grey below Chichibu Bridge, and on the concrete arch above it a handful of people stand angled the same way, phones raised at the same slope of railing. They are not photographing the water. They are matching a frame from a 2011 anime to the exact span of iron and sky in front of them, and then, mostly, putting the phone away and just looking.

The town three films keep returning to

Chichibu (秩父) sits about ninety minutes northwest of Ikebukuro, close enough to Tokyo to be a day trip and far enough that the mountains close in on three sides. It is the home town of the screenwriter Mari Okada, and over a decade three animated features drew their streets, bridges and school gates from it: Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (Anohana, 2011), Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda (2015), and Sora no Aosa o Shiru Hito yo (2019).

The first is the one people come for. Its children call themselves the Super Peace Busters, and the story turns on a summer none of them can put down. The pilgrimage that followed was quiet from the start, more standing than shouting; you notice the fans by their stillness rather than any costume.

The bridge, and how to stand at it

Chichibu Bridge is really a set of crossings laid side by side over the Arakawa. The one the anime frames is an older concrete arch from the early Shōwa years, pale-railinged, with Mount Bukō and the ridgeline standing behind it exactly as drawn. Traffic now uses the newer span alongside, so the approach is shared with cars.

The bridge is a twenty-odd-minute walk northwest of Seibu-Chichibu Station, or a short taxi if the heat is up. There is no plaque, no marked photo spot, nothing to say this is anything but a working river crossing, and that is the etiquette of the place. Fans take their frame from the footpath, stay out of the roadway, and leave the riverbank to whoever else came down to it.

The shrine, and the winter the films borrow

In town, Chichibu Shrine (秩父神社) anchors the old grid, its four-hundred-year-old main hall carved with a tethered dragon attributed to Hidari Jingorō and a set of monkeys that answer Nikkō's famous three — here they see well, hear well and speak well. Admission is free and the grounds open early; a goshuin stamp for your book runs the usual few hundred yen.

Once a year the shrine throws the Chichibu Yomatsuri (秩父夜祭), on the second and third of December — one of Japan's three great float festivals, and a UNESCO-listed one. Great lantern-hung floats are hauled up a slope by hundreds of pullers while winter fireworks open overhead, the rare fireworks Japan saves for the cold. The second film borrows that night almost whole, so if you come for it, book a room months ahead or plan to ride the last train back.

What to eat between frames

Chichibu eats plainly and well. The local set piece is waraji-katsu-don (わらじカツ丼), two thin pork cutlets the length of a straw sandal laid over rice in a sweet-dark sauce; Yasudaya, a wooden shophouse that has served it for generations, does the canonical version for around a thousand yen. Order it and you will not need both lunch and dinner.

On the streets you will see miso potato (みそポテト), chunks of potato fried and brushed with sweet miso, sold for a couple of hundred yen a skewer at stalls near the station. Chichibu is soba country and, being a basin of clean water, a sake town too; the breweries around Bamba-dōri pour tastings if you ask. Back at Seibu-Chichibu Station, Matsuri no Yu (祭の湯) puts a hot spring, a food hall and a souvenir market under one roof for the wait before your train.

秩父の橋は、映画が終わってもそこに架かっている。

Getting there, and when to go

The simplest approach is the Seibu Ikebukuro Line. The Laview limited express, which replaced the old Red Arrow, runs from Ikebukuro to Seibu-Chichibu in about eighty minutes for roughly fifteen hundred yen all in; the regular trains cost less and ask for a change at Hannō. From Seibu-Chichibu the shrine and the old streets are a flat walk, and the bridge a short taxi or a longer stroll to the river.

For colour, aim for mid-April to early May, when the shibazakura (芝桜, moss phlox) on the hill at Hitsujiyama Park runs pink and white under Mount Bukō for a three-hundred-yen entry, or for the December festival if you can take the crowds. The mistake to avoid is treating the "secret base" from the first film as a real building you can visit — it was never one. What is real is the bridge, the river and the light coming off the mountain, and those are enough to stand in front of.