In the footsteps of princesses and samurai

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This was published 13 years ago

In the footsteps of princesses and samurai

The Nakasendo Way , once a vital link between Kyoto and Tokyo, offers a fascinating insight into imperial Japan, writes Susan Gough Henly.

ONE glorious spring day, while my companions and I are walking along a bucolic stretch of the Nakasendo Way, a fellow wearing a traditional blue jacket and conical hat invites us inside a tea house for refreshments. We sit on tiny stools at a low table set on a dirt floor in a room that feels as though it hasn't changed for eons.

Our host pours us piping-hot cups of tea from a cast-iron kettle. He returns the kettle to its long hook - decorated with a cast-iron fish to ward away the likelihood of fire - above a sunken ash hearth. There is no chimney. Instead, the soaring cedar beams of the wooden tea house are cured a deep brown from centuries of smoke.

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Outside, the air is perfumed by delicate pale-pink blossoms that flutter from a grove of weeping cherry trees. We fill our water bottles from a bamboo trough and, after making several bows, continue on our journey.

We are walking Japan's ancient Middle Mountain Way. It wends across valleys and mountain passes between the old imperial capital of Kyoto and the shogunate stronghold of Edo, otherwise known as Tokyo. Once a busy byway travelled by feudal lords, samurai warriors, merchants and pilgrims, the Nakasendo Way offers a tantalising taste of old Japan that can be nigh on impossible to find in the country's kitch-obsessed, neon-bright cities.

Walk Japan is described by National Geographic as one of the 200 best adventure companies on Earth. Walk Japan's founders, Dick Irving, a Japanese social geography professor from Britain, and Tom Stanley, a Japanese history professor from the US, first combined walking and culture when they started taking friends along the Nakasendo Way in the early 1990s. Today, the company's staff of nine, all fluent in Japanese, offer eight different walking trips from Kyushu to Hokkaido. Each is a form of cultural immersion, one step at a time.

Our group is led by Stanley. Our trainee guide, 25-year-old English-Japanese Ed Dickinson, adds a young local's perspective. He lives with his Japanese aunt in her 150-year-old village home. Diana and Roger, a well-travelled pair from Sydney, and my husband and I, from Melbourne, round out the group. We hop on trains to leapfrog most of the urban sections of the trail and walk between six and 22 kilometres a day to cover the best 140 kilometres of the 550-kilometre journey between Kyoto and Tokyo. In the process, we bypass tourist ghettos while exploring a landscape that is etched in the Japanese psyche.

Starting at the Heian Shinto shrine in Kyoto, whose blazing red torii gate is one of the largest in the country, we select our fortunes (written on pink paper for spring) by shaking out a random stick with a number. Then we join the locals in an equally pleasing ritual of tying papers containing unsavoury predictions to tree branches, to create beautiful cherry trees of unwanted fortunes. It's an auspicious start.

We begin the walk in earnest at an engraved marker for the Nakasendo not far from the post town of Hosokute. Farmers call out "konichiwa" in the dazzling spring sunshine as they prepare rice paddies for planting; a young woman points the way at a confusing intersection as she waters daffodils and tulips planted in recycled tyres. Every square inch of arable land is carefully tended: rows of scallions stand to attention underneath plastic bottles reconfigured as whirligig scarecrows, carpets of crimson and purple star flox spill over rock walls and billowing bushes of yellow rape line the roadside.

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Walking past immaculate hamlets of half-timbered houses, with curving ceramic-tile roofs and flagpoles sporting huge, multi-coloured fish kites, we climb hillsides of flowering cherries, green pines and silver bamboo groves. In the woods, we pass Jizo statues, small stone guardian deities often draped in red, which are believed to have protected travellers for centuries. Snow-covered mountains can be seen in the distance through low-hanging clouds.

Stanley leads us from the fortified castle town of Hikone, one of just 12 in which an original castle-keep survives, to the battlefield of Sekigahara, scene of one of Japan's fiercest battles; a battle that eventually heralded more than 250 years of peace and prosperity during the Edo period. We then pass through ancient post towns whose wooden shops, restaurants and inns still stretch out in linear fashion along the Nakasendo Way, ready to feed, water, house and otherwise entertain travellers.

Throughout the walk, Stanley unobtrusively explains the mysteries of the journey, from the large earthen distance mounds on either side of the path that mark each ri, or 3.9-kilometre stage, to the wooden noticeboards at the entrance to post towns detailing shogunate edicts on everything from porterage fees to criminal offences punishable by public beheadings.

Often we are the only walkers on the path, although we meet several groups of Japanese who wave to us heartily. In shogun times, travel along the Nakasendo was strictly regulated.

Members of the imperial family, lords and samurai on official business would be carried in palanquins, supported by huge numbers of retainers. The headmen of post towns would house these officials in elaborate inns. In the mid-1800s, for example, 25,000 porters and samurai accompanied the 16-year-old princess, Kazunomiya, the last of the imperial princesses to travel this "highway of the princesses" as part of an arranged marriage with the Tokugawa shogun.

We pass a stone engraved with her calligraphy, which stands on the highest mountain pass looking back to Kyoto.

Merchants travelled on horseback for business while commoners were permitted only to walk when on pilgrimage to Shinto and Buddhist shrines. Today, modern-day pilgrims can be found trawling for an evasive past among the waterwheels and timber shop fronts in the restored post towns of Tsumago and Magome, the birthplace of Shimazaki Toson, who pioneered the realist novel in Japan. We are fortunate to greet the past every evening as nightingales trill from cypress trees and stone lanterns light the way to traditional inns. In Otsumago, we have to bend low to enter through the tiny front door of the historic hinoki cedar Maruya Inn, leaving our hiking boots in the dirt-floor entrance.

The Fujiwara family still pulls the wooden shutters across the front windows of the inn at night, to shut out the cold and ensure the fire in the sunken hearth warms the main room.

At the Shinchaya mountain inn, a stone is engraved with a haiku poem by the renowned poet Basho, praising the tranquillity of the natural world. We eat the rice our host, Hara-san, has grown, the wild boar he has hunted and the mountain vegetables, mushrooms and bamboo shoots he has gathered in the woods. Each inn prides itself on its cuisine. There may be pork and vegetables in broth, grilled pink-spotted trout with fresh ginger, tempura vegetables, bamboo-shoot soup, wagyu beef, miso soup with fresh tofu, as well as a few surprises such as horse sashimi and grilled grasshoppers.

Unlike expensive ryokan, there are no en suites: toilets, sinks and deep cedar baths are shared and we make our own beds in the tatami-mat rooms. Yet the greeting from each innkeeper, with their long, low bows, is warm and genuine, welcoming us to their homes. Through the shoji screens, we hear children playing in the kitchen and the walls have pictures of the family celebrating local festivals. A hot bath is always ready and, thanks to Stanley and Irving's careful instructions, we are well versed in minshuku etiquette. We throw off our hiking gear and head one at a time to the bathroom to sit on a small stool and scrub ourselves under a shower. Making sure that every skerrick of soap is removed, we then soak aching muscles in the bath.

Travelling the Nakasendo Way can transport you to another era but the magic is ephemeral. At times you walk on urban bitumen past neatly tended flowerpots, as varied as the pickled vegetables at a traditional breakfast.

Other times, your boots navigate cobblestones laid in the 17th century as you pass Shinto shrines dedicated to the natural world. In a single day, you can buy a hot can of coffee from a roadside vending machine, marvel at a samurai's breast plate made from lacquered turtle shells coated with persimmon juice and move from a dirt-floor inn entrance to sit (after changing into a special pair of slippers) on a heated toilet that does everything but polish your rear end.

Yet as evening closes in, your body glowing from a steaming bath, you still sit dressed in a traditional yukata robe at a low table while savouring a dozen delicate dishes in a ritual of continuity.

The writer was a guest of Walk Japan.

Trip notes

Getting there

Jetstar flies to Tokyo (Narita) and Osaka, priced from $1054. 131 538, jetstar.com. Trains from Osaka and Tokyo travel to Kyoto, where the Nakasendo Way walk begins. www.railplus.com.au.

Walking there

A 12-day Nakasendo Way trek is priced from $US3752 ($4300) a person, twin share. Includes all local travel, accommodation, breakfasts and 10 evening meals. +81 90 5026 3638, www.walkjapan.com.

Staying there

As part of the walk, travellers spend two nights in Kyoto with guides. Hotel accommodation on the final night in Tokyo is also included in the package.

Dress

Bring comfortable hiking boots, rain jacket, rain-resistant pants, hat, gloves and a collapsible umbrella. Inns provide yukata (evening kimono) and warm jackets to wear to dinner and bed. Collapsible walking poles also recommended.

Local secret

There are two opportunities during the walk to visit local hot spring baths. Men and women bathe in separate sections. The Japanese wash before enjoying the baths and like very hot water.

See + do

Kyoto

The Miyako Odori traditional dances are performed by geisha and maiko (apprentices) at the Gion Kobu Kaburenjo Theatre at Gion Corner. Before each performance a tea ceremony is held. www.miyako-odori.jp/miyakoodori/english.html.

The Philosopher's Walk is a two-kilometre path in north-eastern Kyoto. Start at the Silver Pavilion, with its great gardens.

Tokyo

On Sundays, the Omotesando-Harajuku-Meiji shrine area is the place to go to see weddings. Jingu Bridge is a favourite of "cosplay" (costume play) girls dressed in gothic styles and as manga characters.

Sumo tournaments are held in January, May and September. ent-sumo.pia.jp/en/sumo09.php.

Further information

jnto.org.au.

With the kids

The best trips for families are the Nakasendo Way (or Summer Nakasendo Way), Shogun Trail and Kunisaki Trek. Walk Japan stipulates that children should be aged 12 or older to join one of the scheduled tours. Families can bring along younger children on custom tours. Kids enjoy the samurai stories, living at floor level, bathing in onsen and the variety of small dishes at breakfast and dinner, as well as tourist knick-knacks such as wooden toys, mobile-phone charms and wooden samurai swords. According to Tom Stanley, children are great travellers and good company.

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