The Great Buddha of Nara at Tōdai-ji was the work of Emperor Shōmu, who also ordered a temple in every province and moved his capital from Heijō Palace to Kuni-kyō and Shigaraki.
After smallpox, rebellion and poor harvests, Shōmu turned to Buddhism for protection. This route follows him from Nara through two short-lived capitals and a provincial temple in today's Tokyo, back to the Eye-opening Ceremony of 752. Some sites are only ruins or remain approximate.
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 Wolverine (2013) is set in Tokyo and Nagasaki, but it was filmed at Zojo-ji Temple, Nakagin Capsule Tower, Fukuyama Station and the port of Tomonoura, plus a reserve near Sydney standing in for 1945.
The route follows Logan from a prisoner-of-war camp in August 1945 to Yashida's funeral in Tokyo, a bullet-train fight and a hideout in a love hotel, ending in the fishing port of Tomonoura. Several scenes were shot in Australia, and the Nakagin tower no longer stands.
Sanada Yukimura's story runs from Ueda Castle to exile in Kudoyama and a last stand at Osaka Castle, Sanada Maru and Tennōji. He held Ueda against a far larger Tokugawa army in 1600, then died in 1615.
The route follows him from the Sekigahara campaign through exile below Mount Kōya to the Winter and Summer sieges of Osaka. Some sites are marked approximately, because the sources do not give exact spots.
Lafcadio Hearn's Japan runs from Matsue Castle and Izumo Taisha to Kumamoto, Yaizu and Akama Shrine in Shimonoseki, home of the Kwaidan ghost tale of Hōïchi the Earless.
The route follows his years as a teacher and writer: the samurai house in Matsue, a railway station scene from Kokoro, a fishing town he wrote about, and the shrine that keeps Hōïchi's statue. Hearn does not name the Kumamoto station, so that pin is approximate.
The Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281 were fought at Tsushima, Iki Island and Hakata Bay in Fukuoka, and ended off Takashima, where a typhoon struck the fleet.
This route follows the two attempts in order: the 1274 landings on Tsushima and Iki, the Battle of Bun'ei at Hakata Bay and Hakozaki Shrine, then the stone wall built afterwards, the fleet anchored off Shikanoshima and the storm of 15 August 1281. Several spots are approximate, and the exact site of the Takashima episode is only the island's general area.
The Siege of Odawara of 1590 was fought at Odawara Castle in Kanagawa, with Toyotomi Hideyoshi's one-night castle at Ishigakiyama and Hōjō outposts at Hachigata, Hachiōji and Oshi.
Hideyoshi's army surrounded the Hōjō capital while other forces took its castles across the region one by one. This route follows the campaign through five castle sites, from the siege to the last holdouts, and most can still be visited as parks or ruins.
Kawabata's Snow Country is set in the hot spring town of Yuzawa in Niigata, reached through the Shimizu Tunnel on the Joetsu Line. The author never names the town in the novel, but later wrote that the snow country is the Echigo-Yuzawa hot spring.
This route follows Shimamura's train ride from the long border tunnel, past the signal stop and Echigo-Yuzawa Station, to the inn where Kawabata stayed, Komako's attic room and the warehouse fire that ends the book.
Admiral Yi Sun-sin fought Japan's invasion fleets in 1592–1598 along Korea's south coast, from his base at Yeosu to Okpo, Hansan Island, the Myeongnyang Strait and the Noryang Strait, where he died in the last major battle.
The route follows five places in order: the headquarters, the first victory, the crane-wing trap, the strait where 13 ships faced a far larger fleet, and the final night. Several pins mark waters or harbours rather than exact battle spots.
XO, Kitty, the spin-off of the To All the Boys films, is set at a fictional Seoul school but filmed at real places: Incheon International Airport, Kaywon University of Art and Design, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Hwaseong Fortress's Seojangdae.
The route follows Kitty's first season from landing at the airport to the end-of-term talent show, taking in a hotel exterior at State Tower Namsan, Nodeul Island on the Han River and the Independence Hall of Korea in Cheonan. The school itself is fictional, and its interiors were shot at other sites around Seoul.
In 1600 an English pilot came ashore in Japan. FX's Shōgun renames the players — John Blackthorne is William Adams, Lord Toranaga is Tokugawa Ieyasu, Lady Mariko is Hosokawa Gracia — and moves the shipwreck from Usuki to the Izu village of Ajiro. This route follows the documented places behind the drama, from the real landing at Usuki and the regents' court at Osaka Castle to the mansion where Gracia died, Adams's shipyard at Itō, his house in Nihonbashi and his grave at Hirado. The 2024 series was filmed in British Columbia.
The Kojiki, Japan's oldest surviving book, sets its myths in real places: Izumo, which yielded the land, the cave at Takachiho where Amaterasu hid, Kirishima, one candidate for her grandson's descent, and Ise, said to keep her mirror.
This route follows that story to seven places, from Izumo to Takachiho, Kirishima and Ise. The myth is what the text tells; the shrine foundings and excavations are documented history, and each stop keeps the two apart. Several sites are traditional identifications that rival places also claim.
In July 1853 four black warships anchored off Uraga and ended more than two centuries of Japanese seclusion. Within a year, Commodore Matthew Perry had delivered a president's letter, signed a treaty and opened two ports.
The route follows his two voyages: from the Ryukyu court at Shuri to Uraga, Kurihama, the treaty at Yokohama and the temples of Shimoda. Perry also visited Hakodate in 1854, but that stop is not included.
Toru Watanabe, a drama student in late-1960s Tokyo, looks back on the years he spent between two women: Naoko, the fragile girlfriend of his dead best friend, and Midori, a classmate who is everything Naoko is not. Haruki Murakami's 1987 novel made him a superstar in Japan.
The route follows Watanabe across the city: his dormitory, a long Sunday walk by the moat, Naoko's apartment in Kokubunji, the campus, the streetcar to Midori's neighbourhood, a house at the edge of Kichijōji and the platform at Ueno. Murakami drew on his own student years, but the novel's dormitory and university are invented, so those two pins mark real stand-ins.
Gil Pender is a screenwriter with a nostalgia problem, in Paris with a fiancée and her wealthy parents. Every night at midnight a 1920s car pulls up and carries him back to the 1920s, among the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway and the surrealists. By day he is stuck in 2010.
This route follows the film from Monet's garden at Giverny to Pont Alexandre III, with the stops placed from a film-locations guide: where the 1920s scenes are shot you can still sit, eat and shop today. The party and flea-market scenes are approximate.
Sunja grows up in her mother's boarding house on Yeongdo, an island in the harbour of Busan, under Japanese rule. Pregnant by a married man, she marries a gentle minister instead and leaves with him for Osaka, where Koreans live poor and despised in a neighbourhood called Ikaino. The Apple TV+ series (2022–2024), based on Min Jin Lee's 2017 novel, follows four generations of her family from 1915 to 1989.
The route follows the family through real places in Korea and Japan, in story order. Homes, shops and offices in the series are fictional, so the pins mark the neighbourhoods and cities where the story is set, not filming locations.
