In Unbeaten Tracks in Japan she wrote of Akayu: the frequented watering-place of Akayu in the north, is a perfect garden of Eden, 'tilled with a pencil instead of a plough,' growing in rich profusion rice, cotton, maize, tobacco, hemp, indigo, beans, egg-plants, walnuts, melons, cucumbers, persimmons, apricots, pomegranates; a smiling and plenteous land, an Asiatic Arcadia, prosperous and independent, all its bounteous acres belonging to those who cultivate them, who live under their vines, figs, and pomegranates, free from oppression--a remarkable

spectacle under an Asiatic despotism.Akayu is most famous for Akayu Onsen (赤湯温泉), a series of ryokan famed for their natural hot-springs which are believed to have medicinal properties.

It is said that the feudal chief of Mutsu Province, Minamoto no Yoshitsuna took a wounded soldier to a hot spring bath.

The district also has an internationally recognised hang-gliding venue, the Sky Park, which hosted the Third Women's Hang Gliding Championships in 1993.

Akayu's most famous ex-resident is Toyotarō Yūki, a former governor of the Bank of Japan, and the town has a museum devoted to his life.