Catalog
Where was Yamatai, the kingdom of Queen Himiko? The two leading answers are Yoshinogari in Saga, northern Kyushu, and Makimuku beside the Hashihaka Kofun in Sakurai, Nara. The route follows the Wei Zhi account of Himiko from Iki Island and the Shikanoshima gold seal to the two rival sites, and ends at the burial mound often linked with her grave. The location of Yamatai is still unsettled.
Emperor Go-Daigo overthrew the Kamakura shogunate in 1333 after holding out at Kasagi Temple, being exiled to the Oki Islands and escaping to Mount Funanoue, and he ended his life at Yoshino. This route follows him from Kasagi to Kyoto and the Southern Court. The six stops trace 1331 to 1339: the failed stand at Kasagi, exile on Oki, the escape to Mount Funanoue, the short Kenmu Restoration in Kyoto, the temporary palace at Yoshimizu Shrine and the emperor's tomb at Nyoirin-ji. Several pins are approximate because the sources describe regions or traditions, not exact spots.
The Shinsengumi, the squad of Kondō Isami and Hijikata Toshizō, began in Hino in the Tama region and ended in Hakodate. Their story runs through Mibu-dera and the Ikedaya Inn in Kyoto, the battle of Fushimi, and Kondō's execution in Itabashi. The route follows Kondō Isami and Hijikata Toshizō from a dojo in Hino to the Boshin War. Several stops can still be visited, though some pins mark an area rather than the exact spot.
Miyamoto Musashi, Japan's most famous swordsman, moves through this route from the Sekigahara campaign of 1600 to the duel on Ganryū Island, Osaka Castle, Kumamoto Castle and the cave of Reigandō, where he wrote The Book of Five Rings. The route follows the biography stop by stop, from a village birthplace that sources place in two provinces to the cave where he spent his last years. Several details, including his role at Sekigahara and Osaka, are debated or rest on later accounts.
Lucky Star is set in Saitama, north of Tokyo, and its anime borrows real places: Washinomiya Shrine in Kuki, Kasukabe Station, the Gongendo embankment in Satte and Akihabara. The route follows the four high-school girls from their neighbourhoods to the shrine where fans began their pilgrimages in 2007, then on to Akihabara and Tokyo Big Sight. The anime changes some names, so several pins mark a model, not an exact scene.
Alice in Borderland begins with three friends running through Shibuya and ends with Arisu and Usagi fighting for the city itself. Between those points the series empties Tokyo, then lets it grow over. This route follows the real Shibuya landmarks the characters use — the scramble crossing, the Hachikō gate, Shibuya Stream, 109 and SHIBUYA SKY — and visits the two sets where the empty and overgrown city was built, in Ashikaga and Yokohama. The story never leaves Tokyo; the production did. This route follows the Netflix series, not Haro Aso's manga, and each stop keeps the story place and its stand-in apart.
Team Ninja's open-world samurai game drops a masterless Blade Twin into the last years of the shogunate. Between 1858 and 1868 the story runs from Yokohama's foreign quarter through the killing of a Chief Minister to Kyoto's Shinsengumi and a plot to burn Edo. This route follows the game's main story through seven places, from the port to the capital, pairing each scene with the real site that history ties to it. Where the game names only a district, the pin marks the nearest well-known landmark.
The Boshin War ran from Kyoto to Hakodate in eighteen months: the battlefield at Toba, Edo Castle, the hill of Ueno, Aizu's castle and Goryōkaku. In January 1868 the young emperor was declared ruler in fact as well as name, ending more than 250 years of Tokugawa rule, and the last shogun's supporters fought on until a breakaway republic made its last stand. The route follows that war in six places, all of them visitable: the battlefield at Toba, Edo Castle, the hill of Ueno, Aizu's castle and the hill where its teenage soldiers died, and Goryōkaku. Dates are given in the Western calendar, converted from the Japanese lunar dates used at the time.