This is part of Uncovering Japan, a collection of stories that spotlight the lesser known gems that belong on your Japan itinerary, offering everything from a wellspring of local craft and a vibrant street-food culture to traditional wellness. Read more here.
It’s so stormy and rough when I walk onto the tarmac of Fukuoka Airport that my umbrella is blown inside out, and I wonder whether my flight will even take off. Once onboard I nervously buckle up, and we take off into an uninviting sky. But just 20 minutes into our 40-minute flight from Fukuoka to Fukue—the largest and most populated of Japan’s Gotō Islands, population 38,000—the skies clear. When the small twin-propeller DHC-8-400 dips its wings to start its descent, shafts of sunlight beam down and I catch my first glimpse of this fabled, subtropical Japanese archipelago, also called the Islands of Prayer. It’s fitting for the moment, since I was uncharacteristically pleading with the gods at takeoff.
Strewn below, towering green peaks rise from the choppy but shimmering Sea of Japan. There are lush swaths of forests, wind-bent palms, isolated golden-sand beaches, and basalt coves and sleepy ports peppered with bobbing boats and wooden fishermen’s shacks. In recent years the Gotō Islands have drawn urban transplants from Osaka, Tokyo, and Fukuoka who are seeking a more relaxed pace of life, in tune with the rhythms of nature. The result has been new cafés, izakaya, galleries, and inns across the area. But the Gotō Islands are not just a picturesque destination for visitors seeking reinvention; they’ve served as a cultural bridge to cosmopolitan mainland Asia ever since they became a sanctuary from insular Edo-era Japan in the 1600s.
To really decipher the Gotō Islands requires understanding two things: their history and geography. Located just 50 miles off Japan’s southwest coast in Kyushu’s Nagasaki prefecture, Fukue is the largest of the 150-plus islands and home to their biggest port and city (just 146 miles west of Jeju Island, South Korea). It’s 200 miles closer to Shanghai than Tokyo, and it and the other four inhabited Gotō islands have their own volcanic, subtropical flavor that’s like nothing else in the Land of the Rising Sun.
When Japan banned Christianity in 1614 at the dawn of the Edo era, persecuted devotees, both Japanese and foreign, sought refuge in these far-flung islands. Over the years a network of hidden Christian sites emerged, and today Fukue is home to around 50 Christian churches, some of which received UNESCO World Heritage status in 2018. But don’t think for a minute the islands are not Japanese; there are also numerous Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, and plenty of izakaya and Japanese minka (farmhouses)—all things I love about Japan that have kept me coming back to the country for the last 15 years.
Long before the Edo era, the Gotō archipelago was an important stop for the maritime traffic of China, Korea, and Japan between the seventh and ninth centuries during China’s golden-age Tang dynasty. Back then, Japan’s political and cultural envoys to prosperous China would stop on the island of Fukue before crossing the threshold onto the Asian continent. And new ideas from Asia would first land here: Japan’s famous eighth-century-born priest Kukai (Kōbō Daishi) was one such passerby; he founded the Shingon school of Japanese Buddhism, which helped spread the religion to Japan. A statue of him can be found on Kashiwazaki Cape on the north shore, and in 806 CE he is said to have visited Myojoin Temple in Gotō City, the oldest wooden structure on the island and prized for its ceiling decorated with 121 paintings of flowers and birds.
Like Kukai, I was only passing through. I spent three nights in Gotō, a decent amount of time to visit the main island of Fukue, though you could easily spend a week or more. For the first night I stayed in Fukue’s biggest city, which was renamed Gotō in 2004, after Fukue port merged with the towns of Kishiku, Miiraku, Naru, Tamanoura, and Tomie. Just across from the port where the 30-minute long jetfoil ferries from Nagasaki drop passengers is the Goto Tsubaki Hotel, an ideal spot to get a lay of the land.
A short walk from the hotel took me to Ishida Castle, one of the last castles built in Japan, completed in 1863. Only its gate and moss-covered fortified walls remain, and the site now houses the Gotō Municipal High School, a cultural center, Gotō’s tourism office, and a public library, all located within the former castle’s walls. Next door is the former Lord Gotō Residence, a traditional house built in 1861 with tatami mats, fusuma sliding doors, a Japanese garden, and a pond shaped into the Chinese character for “heart” (心) designed by Zensho, a Kyoto monk.
