05 June 2012
Back to Japan
Earlier this year I repeated in part an organised trek along sections of the Nakasendo (中山道), taking a shortened winter version of the walk organised by Walk Japan. While it's fashionable to decry organised travel in any form (see comments others have left on some earlier posts), there are times when an immense amount of value can be added, and this is what Walk Japan does, providing native-level Japanese speakers, immense amounts of academically sourced background information, and access to parts of Japan (especially traditional inns and bathhouses) that in some cases might be loathe to accept foreigners if they were not confident they'd been schooled in the niceties of Japanese etiquette (sleeping, bathing, and eating in particular). Despite a great deal of travel in Japanese backwaters over the last 20 years, and despite remembering my first Nakasendo trip with a pleasure that could only lead to the second being disappointing, the winter version, with long tramps through 30cm-deep snow drifts over multiple passes, and through silent, whitened countryside, was memorable in its own right.
This is the text of a short piece, linked above, that subsequently appeared in the Wall Street Journal until the title 'Walk Me Through Japan,' just one of a number published in several locations partly intended to help revive tourism to Japan in the wake of the tsunami. Shame on me, in fact, for taking so long to publish anything on that topic here.
Walk Me Through Japan
In the suburbs of Nakatsugawa, about 300 kilometers west of Tokyo, a wooden signboard carries notices of the kind common in travelers' haunts across Asia, such as the right prices to pay for porters and transport. But in famously orderly Japan, where crime against visitors is almost unknown, it's a surprise also to see warnings against muggers and drug dealers.
But these notices are merely reproductions of edicts from the Tokugawa shoguns once in control of traffic on Japan's ancient Nakasendo, a footpath-highway between Kyoto and Edo (now Tokyo). Their relevance expired 150 years ago along with the shogunate itself, but some sections of the old route have remained unchanged since its creation in the 17th century.
Just across a footbridge over a busy highway, orderly suburbs with their gardens of tiny topiary peter out and the asphalt turns to earth with a soft coating of leaf litter and pine needles. Then as the path leaves tidy farmland and winds gently up through ever wilder landscape to an 1,100 meter pass, sections are paved with centuries-old irregular stone blocks, whose rounded edges once provided purchase for straw porter sandals. A light dusting of snow decorates path-side statues of red-bibbed Jizo, the Buddhist protector of unborn children and travelers, and Kannon, protector of pack animals and porters.
Originally only the feudal lords of Japan and their retinues were allowed to use this mountain highway, but for 20 years now specialist operator Walk Japan (www.walkjapan.com) has led small groups on an increasingly popular trek through well-preserved historic post towns and over remote mountain passes, whose beauty inspired woodblock prints by Hiroshige and others.
Nights are spent at creaking wooden traditional inns, many of which have been run by the same family for hundreds of years. They have changed little since their founding, except for the handy addition of wi-fi and heated lavatory seats.
The first day of the shorter winter version of the walk, recently revived as the first anniversary of the tsunami approaches and foreign visitors return to Japan. The walkers reach the hamlet of Shinchaya at mid-afternoon on the first day. There, the multi-course evening meal, taken seated on the tatami-matted floor while wearing a cotton yukata gown and haori jacket—as travelers have for centuries—is fit for a king, let alone a lord. It includes wild boar from the surrounding forest shot by the still spry 70-year-old host himself, whose family has run an inn here for eight generations.
His ancestors would have seen feudal lords and their retinues pass by on their way to and from Edo. The Tokugawa shoguns created their highway network partly in order to keep restive aristocrats busy by compelling them to make extended visits, and to leave family members behind as hostages. The expense of travel and of maintaining twin establishments drained resources that might otherwise have funded insurrection. More than 30 different lords were instructed to use the Nakasendo, with their travel carefully scheduled so that the post towns would not be over-stretched.
In summer tour buses drop groups at the top of the steep hill at Magome, the next post town. But in winter there's almost no one about, although buns stuffed with piping hot meat or vegetables are still on sale. Once broken open they steam in the wintry sunshine, and fuel the walk over Magome Pass.
Halfway to the next post town, a 250-year-old tea house offers tea, pickled radish and sour plums, along with mochi rice cakes in its smoky, earthen-floored interior.
The path snakes down prettily through giant stands of bamboo to Tsumago, perhaps the best-preserved post town of all, completely free of any sign of modernity. A magnificent inn used by feudal lords has been turned into a museum with explanations of the highway's history.
After Tsumago there's a downhill walk through farmland and forests to Nagiso to pick up a local train to Kiso-Fukushima, where an ancient barrier station has been recreated. Here samurai bristling with the fearsome weaponry now on display examined travel documents, searched for unlicensed guns and illegal Christian paraphernalia and checked the sex of more androgynous males to make sure that no hostage wives were being smuggled out of Edo.
In winter the guards dealt with only a dozen or so travelers a day, and they are as few now. At other seasons a lord's retinue might number 3000—in 1862, 17-year-old Princess Kazunomiya's party of 15,000 plus porters took a full three days to pass.
Two days later the trip ends in Matsumoto atop the tower of a magnificent wooden castle built in the 1580s, the oldest surviving in Japan and named Black Raven for its layers of darkly lacquered wood.
Many modern-day visitors merely ricochet between Tokyo and Kyoto by bullet train, but Japan seems almost purpose-built for taking things slowly. Its volcanic countryside offers gentle climbs to passes with fine views that always compensate for the effort made, as well as mineral-rich geothermally-heated spring waters cleverly piped straight to baths at each night's accommodation, and which provide the perfect balm for any aches at the end of a day on foot.
The brash and glittery modern Japan of tune-playing crosswalks and talking vending machines seems not just of a different time, but of a different country altogether.
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