Samurai towns, Japanese oyster farmers and coastal art on the back roads of Honshu

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).

A time-out-of-mind atmosphere pervades the mountain town of Magome, a centuries-old staging post on the eastern border of Gifu Prefecture. On the main street, stone steps ascend alongside a trickling stream, where a wooden waterwheel ticks around slowly like a sleepy clock, setting the town’s somnolent tempo as it has for some 300 years. Houses line the road, old but beautifully preserved, shuttered with wooden screens and hung with swaying lanterns. Gingko and maple leaves crown the street in a blaze of saffron and cardinal red.

It’s autumn, perhaps the best season to visit Japan. At this time of year, the country is spared the crowds that come to chase the spring cherry blossom — but the trees put on an equally eye-catching show of fiery hues. In pale contrast to the inferno in the trees above is a wall crawling with ghost plants, succulents that bloom in wan rosettes through cracks in the stone.

“I’ve never seen that before,” says a passing tourist from Nagoya, peering disbelievingly for a closer look. This encroachment of nature in man-made environments is particularly noticeable in the unspoilt, little-visited prefectures of Gifu and Ishikawa, where in large swathes the only signs of human civilisation are ancient footways connecting wooden villages. Forests and rice paddies stagger down to some of the quietest stretches of coastline in Japan. My plan is to explore the historic post towns, sake breweries and swordsmiths of Gifu before heading north into Ishikawa, on a road trip that will become progressively more rural as I head for the Sea of Japan. 

Magome is an old post town on the ancient Nakasendo Way.

Photography by Alamy Stock Photo

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Magome has long been a place of rest. In the Edo period from the 17th to 19th centuries, it was a staging post on the Nakasendo, a highway from Tokyo (then called Edo) to Kyoto through the alpine spine of Japan’s main island, Honshu. The path is still more or less intact, though moss and ferns now creep between the flagstones. Whereas once it was used by feudal lords, merchants and samurai, today it’s a popular route for hikers. 

Shops in Magome are geared up to cater for walkers. “Be Bear Aware!” warn several posters pinned to shopfronts, advertising the sale of bells designed to ward off the Japanese black bears that have been known to cross paths with people in the forests. There are around 10,000 of these bears in the country and, though normally shy, they’ve been known — in very rare instances — to maim or kill those who stumble upon them in the wild. 

Heading out of the town on foot, I follow the original Edo-era cobblestones aimlessly through the woods of cedar, hinoki cypress and pine for an hour, fording tinkling streams and passing moss-grown forest shrines. A walk in the woods is well known in Japan as a health tonic, and I soon feel my pulse slow and my muscles relax. The only sound is burbling water and the gentle clack of wooden votive plaques swaying in the breeze beside a shrine. There’s certainly no sign of anything resembling a bear — but when I hear something large rustling behind a stand of bamboo, I take it as my cue to turn back to Magome.

Seki swordmakers

The next morning, forest-flanked mountain roads bring me to Seki — a small city just over an hour’s drive west of Magome, which has been a centre of swordmaking for some 800 years. The samurai, it’s said, believed that whoever controlled Seki controlled Japan, because of the superiority of its traditional craftsmanship. Nowadays, swordmakers supplement their income with high-quality nail clippers, kitchen cutlery and anything else requiring a sharp blade.

 A Seki swordmaker cuts bamboo. Learning the craft is not an easy feat, taking many years to fully become a master swordsmith.

Photography by Visit Gifu

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Curious to see these skills in action, I pay a visit to the studio of 26th-generation swordsmith Kanefusa Fujiwara. A tidal wave of sparks rises into the air, breaking and melting to nothingness against the wall of protective glass that separates me from Fujiwara. He doesn’t even flinch as he gives near-imperceptible nods to his two apprentices, indicating where they should aim the next swing of their hammers.

The process is the same today as it was centuries ago — the sword is pounded until flat, then folded back on itself; this is then repeated multiple times. There are no goggles in sight — all three wear white cloth overalls, tied at the waist with a sash. The apprentices wear open, woven-wicker zori sandals while Fujiwara is in his socks.

Seki swordmaking relies on resources from the local countryside: pine charcoal heats the metal to 1,300C, water from the Tsubo River cools it and the region’s red clay is mixed with ash to treat the blade. It’s this quality that led master swordsmith Kiju to establish his workshop in Seki in the 14th century, founding the city’s esteemed tradition. “It’s been said from times of old that Seki blades never bend or break, and always cut well,” Fujiwara tells me.

It takes 10 years to become a fully fledged swordsmith — I started when I was 18.

It looks dangerous work, I say. “Well, I’ve had a few burns and sparks fly into my eyes now and then,” he says with indifference. “But I wouldn’t say it’s dangerous.” He turns to me with a gaze as sharp as a Japanese katana sword — “would you like to try it?” Unsure if this is a question or a command, I enter the glass cubicle and take a sledgehammer from the outstretched hand of an apprentice. The hammer is lighter than I expect, and the process more delicate; the apprentice shows me where to strike the rod of molten metal, each time Fujiwara giving the prompt with a subtle nod of his head. 

Ready for a change of scene, the next day I leave Gifu behind for Ishikawa with the fir forests and mountain meadows of Hakusan National Park flashing past my car window. Heading north from Kanazawa, the land runs out where the Hokuriku Coast meets the Sea of Japan. My destination is the Noto Peninsula, a gnarled appendage of land four hours’ drive north of Seki where green oceans of paddy fields meet an obsidian-black coastline.

Unused buildings across the peninsula have been handed over to contemporary artists from across Japan and beyond to be used as exhibition spaces for their work, opening to the public for the Oku-Noto Triennale art festival in September and October 2023. Following a map from the festival website, I stop the car outside a former nursery school overlooking the ocean in the town of Suzu to take a peek. The exterior is nondescript, but crossing the threshold reveals a realm of vivid red that makes me gasp. In this work by Chiharu Shiota called The Boat Which Carries Time, a red woollen web of millions of threads connects a wooden fishing boat to the ceiling and walls. 

The spectre of the sea lurks throughout Noto’s modern art installations. A 10-minute drive away, in an old school, Motoi Yamamoto’s A Path of Memories has turned the walls into a maze of patterns drawn in salt. The maze leads me to a room where the mineral covers everything — raked across the floor like the gravel of a Zen garden, packed into bricks and arranged in a crumbling wall that recalls a castle ruin. It feels like I’m in a temple in the computer game The Legend of Zelda.

These works are a fitting mirror to the Noto lifestyle, which still owes everything to the sea. The coast is lined with salt farms that still use the centuries-old Agehama method to extract the salt from sea water that evaporates on the beach in beds of sand and clay. 

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Left: Persimmons are hung outside homes to dry in the sun.

Photography by Mark Parren Taylor

Right: Sake is often the drink of choice when pairing alcohol with local food. 

Photography by Yoshiyoshi HirokawaOyster country

Travelling on by car to Nanao Bay, I join a tour of an oyster farm. We’re shown a warehouse full of workers sorting and shucking oysters before we board a fishing boat that heads out into the bay. Here, farmers lay lines of scallop shells to serve as nurseries for oysters — a sustainable farming practice that replicates the way the molluscs grow in the wild. The boat’s captain hauls up a line of mature oysters and one is cracked on the hull of the vessel for me to try. The flavour is incredible — a result of the mineral-rich waters of the harbour, the fisherman explains. It’s impossibly fresh, meaty as game and run through with the salt of the sea. 

More of Noto’s coastal charms can be experienced on Notojima, a tiny island connected by road to the rest of the peninsula. Here I meet Hajime Koyama, a former environmental consultant who moved to Noto from Tokyo and now runs tours. “I moved here for three reasons,” he tells me, as we embark on a cycling trail around the island. “The food, the scenery and the people.”

As we cycle, Hajime points out rock pools where his daughter spearfishes for small octopus, and we visit the island’s harbour, where the relatively warm currents off Noto bring in a rich bounty of seafood. When a typhoon wiped out the port’s ¥200m (£1.15m) fishing net system in 2019, disaster was turned into opportunity: the locals rebuilt it themselves and Notojima’s fishing industry is now a community-owned cooperative. 

In autumn, Japanese beech trees in Hakusan National Park take a beautiful emerald green colour.

Photography by Shinichiro Saka

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It’s proved so successful that Noto’s sustainable fishing and farming practices have been named by the United Nations as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, which recognise ‘communities that live in an intricate relationship with their territory’. There’s a word in Japanese — satoumi — for marine and coastal landscapes formed by the harmonious interaction between humans and the natural environment. It could have been coined for Noto. Across the peninsula, there are dolphins in the waters and bears, wild boars, raccoons and other wild animals living off the land. 

The late afternoon sunlight, thick as golden syrup, casts a flat shadow realm before us. Rice paddies glisten, stretching right to the ocean. The silhouettes of pine trees, bent inland by the perpetual sea breeze, lengthen ever further. Outside houses, fish dry on racks, catching the faltering sun like little penknives.“The scenery and the seasons flow slowly on Notojima,” says Hajime, “but because we’re living in the countryside, we have a lot of work to do — planting seeds, getting ready for the festivals. We’re busy every day. But we feel fulfilled.” It feels like a fitting place to end my road trip. This sleepy peninsula is on the edge of Japan, but I could be at the edge of the world.

Getting there & aroundNagoya and Kanazawa, the two gateways to Gifu and Ishikawa respectively, are both served by more than a dozen Shinkansen bullet train services daily from Tokyo. Average train time: 1h45m for Tokyo–Nagoya, 2h45m for Tokyo–Kanazawa.From Nagoya or Kanazawa, the regional areas of Gifu and Ishikawa are both well served by the local train network, but renting a car is the best way to reach the small towns and more rural areas.

When to goSpring and autumn have mild temperatures and often sunny weather, although coastal areas like Noto can be more unpredictable. Summers are humid, with highs of around 30C, while winter highs are around 7C. 

Where to stayTajimaya, Magome. Doubles from ¥9350 (£51), half board. Baison Mino, Seki. Doubles from ¥35200 (£192), B&B. Flatt’s, Noto Peninsula. Doubles from ¥21512 (£124), half board. 

More informationvisitgifu.comishikawatravel.jpRough Guide to Japan. RRP: £18.99

How to do itToyota Rent a Car has branches in both of the gateway cities of Nagoya and Kanazawa. Or buy a two-week Japan Rail Pass.

Published in the Japan supplement, distributed with the October 2023 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).

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