NHK's 2008 drama Atsuhime follows Tenshō-in from Kagoshima and Sakurajima in Satsuma to Edo Castle in Tokyo, where she became wife of the 13th shōgun.
Born Okatsu in the Imaizumi branch of the Shimazu clan, she is adopted by Shimazu Nariakira, moves into Tsurumaru Castle and leaves for the shōgun's court in 1853, the year of Perry's Black Ships. The route follows five places from the drama's first half in Satsuma to the Ōoku. The Imaizumi pin and the Kurihama stop are approximate.
Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, a series of 119 ukiyo-e prints, shows Edo, as Tokyo was then called: Nihonbashi, Kanda Shrine, Shinobazu Pond, Kameido Tenjin, Zōjō-ji and Sensō-ji in Asakusa.
This route follows seven of its views in print order, from Nihonbashi in snow to the gates of Sensō-ji, each tied to a place you can still visit. The Sumida River bridge of the famous sudden shower, and the Nihonbashi stop, have approximate pins.
Philipp Franz von Siebold's Japan story starts on Dejima, the Dutch trading island at Nagasaki, where the physician arrived in 1823. From there it runs to his Narutaki school, his 1826 court journey to Edo and his museum home in Leiden.
The route follows Siebold from Nagasaki to Edo, then to the SieboldHuis in Leiden and his grave in Munich. Nagasaki's Siebold Memorial Museum and Leiden's SieboldHuis can still be visited. The Edo stop is a general marker, not a single building.
Engelbert Kaempfer travelled from Dejima in Nagasaki to the shogun's court in Edo in 1691, via Shimonoseki, Osaka and the Tokaido road near Lake Ashi. He was a German physician with the Dutch trading post.
The route follows his 1691 trip in five stops, from the island of Dejima to his audience with the shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. The exact spots in Shimonoseki, Osaka and Hakone are not known, so those pins are approximate.
Bayside Shakedown is set in Tokyo's fictional Wangan Precinct, and its real home is Odaiba: Fuji Television's headquarters, the island and the Rainbow Bridge that gives the second film its title.
The police comedy began on Fuji TV in 1997, the year the network moved to Odaiba, then a half-empty district. This route follows the show from the studio to Tokyo Teleport Station, the shot-in-Shiomi precinct and a Kyoto road junction that doubled for the bridge.
In 1832 the printmaker Hiroshige travelled the Tōkaidō, the road from Edo to Kyoto, and made it into The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. This route follows seven of his prints, from the bridge where the road began to the bridge where it ended.
Each stop pairs a print with what is there today: a rebuilt checkpoint, a long river bridge, a shrine, a preserved post town. Scholars debate whether Hiroshige saw every station himself, so the pins mark the places, not his exact viewpoints.
Yurucamp (ゆるキャン△) sends a handful of schoolgirls camping around Mount Fuji, and most of what they visit is real.
This route follows eight places from the series, from Lake Motosu to the Mizugaki area. Campsite and shop names are often changed on screen, so each stop names the real place it is modelled on.
Clarín's novel hides Oviedo behind the name Vetusta, a provincial capital of gossip, piety and boredom where Ana Ozores, the Regenta, is slowly worn down. It begins with the Magistral watching the town through a telescope and ends with Ana fainting in his chapel.
The route follows seven scenes from the tower to the duel and the confessional, and ends at the modern statue of Ana. Spanish guides tie some scenes to real Oviedo; where they do not, the pin is approximate or absent.
Lazarillo de Tormes follows a hungry boy serving cruel masters across Spain: the stone bull on Salamanca's Roman bridge, the grapes of Almorox, revenge at Escalona, a squire's empty house in Toledo. It is told in his own sly voice.
This route follows his early years: the stone bull, the grapes at Almorox, the revenge at Escalona, the miser priest at Maqueda and the squire's empty house in Toledo. Most places are named only as towns, so most pins are approximate.
Ida Pfeiffer's 1846–1848 journey around the world passed through Hamburg, the Brazilian forest, Tahiti and Baghdad, as her own book A Woman's Journey Round the World recounts. A 48-year-old Viennese widow with little money, she travelled mostly alone by cargo ship, horseback and caravan, and came home to a Vienna in revolution.
The route follows her first world journey in order, from her own book, A Woman's Journey Round the World: Hamburg, the Brazilian forest, Cape Horn and Valparaíso, Tahiti, Canton, Baghdad, Persia and home. There are no visitor tips for Iraq or Iran.
In 1961 the Freedom Riders took two buses from Washington, D.C. through Rock Hill, Anniston, Birmingham and Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi, to test the Supreme Court's ruling against segregated bus terminals. In Alabama a mob burned a bus while police looked away; hundreds more riders ended up in Mississippi's jails and Parchman Farm.
The route follows the rides through the places where it happened, several of them now museums and part of a National Monument.
War Thunder's tank maps are based on real places: Stalingrad Tractor Plant, Bastogne, Hürtgen Forest, Cologne Cathedral, Berlin's Reichstag, Novorossiysk, Volokolamsk, Breslau (Wrocław), Darwin Hill in the Falklands and the Fulda Gap.
The developers say how close each map is to its original, from rebuilt photographs of the Stalingrad factory to a layout only inspired by the real ground. This route follows ten of them in the order of their history, with a short note on what happened at each real place.
Maps are classed here as exact only where the developers copy a real district; the rest are marked approximate.
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.
Prince Shōtoku's temples in Japan run from Tachibana-dera and Asuka-dera in Asuka to Hōryū-ji and Chūgū-ji in Ikaruga, plus Shitennō-ji in Osaka.
The route follows the regent who promoted Buddhism, from the place said to be his birthplace to his palace site at Ikaruga and the embroidery made after his death in 622. Several dates rest on temple tradition rather than firm records, and the birthplace is marked as traditional.
Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who kept fighting on Lubang Island in the Philippines until 1974, is traced here from the Nakano School in Tokyo to Lubang's mountains and Manila's Malacañang Palace.
Sent to Lubang on 26 December 1944 with orders never to surrender, Onoda stayed in hiding for 28 years, 6 months and 8 days after Japan's surrender. The route follows his training, his years in the hills, his surrender in March 1974 and a disputed return visit in 1996. Several locations are approximate, and accounts of the violence on the island are contested.
The Last Samurai (2003) is set in Japan in 1876 but was filmed mostly in Taranaki, New Zealand, where Mount Taranaki stands in for Mount Fuji, plus Engyō-ji near Himeji, Chion-in in Kyoto and Castle Green in Pasadena.
This route follows Nathan Algren's story from the opening restaurant scene to the parade ground, the fog battle, Katsumoto's village, his temple and the emperor's palace, and shows where each one really is. Several stops are sets or stand-ins.
Shakushain's War (1669) was the Ainu uprising against the Matsumae clan of Japan, fought between Shinhidaka, Matsumae Castle and Kunnui in Hokkaido.
The route follows the revolt from the feud on the Shibechari River to the mediation at Matsumae, the fighting at Kunnui and the leader's death at Piypok. It ends with the Shakushain statue in Shinhidaka. Several sites are approximate and are marked as such.
The Ryukyu Kingdom ruled Okinawa from Shuri Castle in Naha, and its story can still be walked at Nakijin, Zakimi and Katsuren castles and the Tamaudun royal tombs.
The route follows the kingdom from the three-principality era and Shō Hashi's unification in 1429, through a rival lord's fall in 1458, to the royal tombs of 1501. Most of these castle sites are ruins or reconstructions.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 was fought at Port Arthur, on the Yalu River, at Mukden and in the Tsushima Strait, and ended at Portsmouth, Maine.
This route follows the war from the first night attack on Port Arthur in February 1904 to the peace treaty signed in September 1905. Battlefields are pinned approximately; only the Mikasa and the Portsmouth shipyard are exact.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is set in Tokyo, but most of it was shot in Los Angeles; Shibuya Crossing is the best-known real Tokyo spot.
This route follows Sean Boswell from his Arizona school to the car meets, garages and mountain pass of the film, and shows the Los Angeles locations that stood in for Tokyo, from Hawthorne Plaza to San Gabriel Dam. Several scenes are pinned to the stand-in, not the story setting.
The Hagoromo legend, retold in the Noh play Hagoromo, is set at Miho no Matsubara, a pine-lined beach in Shimizu Ward, Shizuoka, with Miho Shrine nearby and Mount Fuji in the distance.
A fisherman finds a celestial maiden's feather robe hanging on a pine and will not give it back until she dances. The route follows the tale from the beach and the legendary pine to the maiden's ascent toward Mount Fuji, the shrine that keeps her plumage, and the monument to a French dancer who loved the story.
Nansō Satomi Hakkenden (Hakkenden) opens in Awa, today southern Chiba, with Takida Castle, Tateyama Castle and Mount Tomi in Chiba, then Koga Castle and Gyōtoku.
A lord's careless joke to his dog brings down a curse, and eight dog warriors are born from a princess's scattered prayer beads. The route follows the opening tale from the old castles of Awa to Princess Fuse's mountain, then the first dog warriors' duel at Koga and rescue at Gyōtoku.
The novel's Tateyama and Hōryūkaku are not the same as the real sites, so most pins are approximate.
Yotsuya Kaidan, the story of the ghost Oiwa, is set in Yotsuya in old Edo and first played at the Nakamura-za theatre in 1825; Banchō Sarayashiki, the tale of Okiku and the missing plate, is set in Banchō, Edo, and claimed by Himeji Castle.
This route follows both kabuki ghost stories through Tokyo and Himeji: the premiere theatre's replica, the Oiwa Inari Tamiya Shrine in Yotsuya, Oiwa's reputed grave at Myōgyō-ji in Sugamo, the Banchō district and Okiku's Well. Several identifications are traditional or disputed, and each stop says so.
The Ashikaga shoguns ruled Japan from Kyoto from 1336 to 1573, and their temples survive as Tenryū-ji, Shōkoku-ji, Kinkaku-ji (the Golden Pavilion), Ryōan-ji and Ginkaku-ji (the Silver Pavilion).
The route follows the dynasty from Ashikaga Takauji's memorial temple for Emperor Go-Daigo, through Yoshimitsu's Flower Palace and golden villa, to the Ōnin War and Yoshimasa's unfinished silver pavilion. The Flower Palace itself is gone; only a stone marker commemorates it.
