鹿島南蓼科ゴルフコース

Few courses in the Japanese highlands carry the quiet authority of Kashima Minami Tateshina Golf Course, laid out across the volcanic uplands of the Yatsugatake foothills south of Chino city in Nagano Prefecture. The Tateshina plateau sits at genuine elevation — roughly 1,000 to 1,400 meters in places — and that altitude shapes everything: the air is thin enough to add real distance to your shots, the summers are mercifully cool when much of Japan bakes, and the surrounding larch and birch forests turn a deep amber gold each October. It is emphatically a seasonal course, the mountain winter closing it for months each year.

The Kashima name connects to the Kashima Construction group, which developed a number of resort and resort-adjacent courses across Japan during the postwar leisure boom, and this property reflects that era's ambition to bring metropolitan golfers into the mountains.

Chino and the broader Suwa basin have long been a retreat for Tokyo residents, and the golf here has that character — unhurried, scenic, a deliberate step outside everyday life.