Sansho the Bailiff (Sanshō Dayū) follows Anju and Zushiō, two noble children sold into slavery, from Naoetsu in Niigata to Tango in northern Kyoto and back to Sado Island. Mizoguchi's 1954 film and Mori Ōgai's 1915 story both retell an older oral tale.
The route runs from the Naoetsu bridge where the family is torn apart, through Yura and the Tango Kokubunji to Kyoto and Sado, and ends on Mount Iwaki, where Anju's memory lives on. The legend is fictional, so most pins are approximate.
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.
In 1878 Isabella Bird, then 46, travelled from Tokyo to Hokkaido and described the journey in letters to her sister, published as Unbeaten Tracks in Japan.
The route follows her dated letters from the landing at Yokohama through Nikkō and the northern river towns to an Ainu village in Hokkaido. Town pins are approximate; the inns and houses she slept in are not located.
