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.
Look Back is set around the hometown of manga artist Tatsuki Fujimoto, Nikaho in Akita Prefecture, and the live-action film of 2026 was shot mainly there, from the cherry-tree lane at Kunpuen to Nikaho Station. The story follows Fujino and Kyomoto, two girls who draw manga together. It became an anime film in June 2024.
The route follows the story from Fujino's childhood walks in Nikaho and the bookshop in Hirasawa, to the rebuilt bedroom sets at the station and the Smile centre, and on to the art university in Yamagata where the story turns.
Massan, the NHK drama of 2014–2015, is set in Glasgow, Takehara, Osaka and Yoichi, and is based on the life of Nikka Whisky founder Masataka Taketsuru and his Scottish wife Rita.
The route follows Masaharu and Ellie from Scotland and Japan's early whisky years at Yamazaki to the Yoichi Distillery in Hokkaido, with notes on what the real couple did. Scenes set in Scotland were not filmed there.
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.
Amachan, the 2013 NHK morning drama, is set in Kitasanriku, a fictional town modelled on Kuji, Iwate; this route visits Kuji Station, Kosode Coast and railway stations along the Sanriku Coast.
Aki, a shy Tokyo girl, becomes a sea-urchin diver and a local idol in a small seaside town. This route follows the hometown chapter through five real places: Kuji Station, Kosode Coast, Horinai Station, Tanohata Station and Taneichi High School. Several stand in for places the drama names differently.
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.
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.
Kintarō, Japan's "Golden Boy", is said to have grown up on Mount Ashigara near Hakone, wrestling bears before Minamoto no Yorimitsu met him at Ashigara Pass and took him as a retainer.
The route follows the folk legend from several claimed birthplaces, Oyama and Yuhi Falls, through Mount Kintoki and Ashigara Pass to Mount Ōe, home of the demon Shuten-dōji. Versions differ, so most pins mark traditional sites rather than proven ones.
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.
Samuel Johnson and James Boswell toured Scotland and the Hebrides in 1773, visiting Monboddo House, Raasay, Inch Kenneth, Iona and Auchinleck. Johnson was sixty-three, Boswell thirty-two, and the journey took eighty-three days.
The route follows five places where their two books touch real ground: a philosopher in farmer's clothes, a dance on Raasay, island hospitality, the ruins of Iona and Boswell's family seat in Ayrshire. The sources do not give exact dates for each stop.
Long Way Down follows Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's 2007 motorbike ride from John o' Groats in Scotland through Silverstone, Tunisia and the pyramids of Giza to Cape Agulhas and Cape Town.
The route picks five stops along the 12 May to 4 August 2007 journey, from the Scottish start to the southernmost tip of Africa. Pins at Tunisia and Giza are approximate.
Oda Nobunaga's rise runs from Kiyosu Castle and the Okehazama battlefield through Gifu, Mount Hiei, Nagashino and Azuchi to Honnō-ji in Kyoto.
The seven stops follow his campaigns in order, from a family struggle in Owari to the 1582 day Akechi Mitsuhide turned on him. Several are castle ruins or rebuilt replicas, and the Honnō-ji pin marks the rebuilt temple.
Nelson Mandela's life runs from a Mbashe River village to the lawns of the Union Buildings in Pretoria, with stops at Fort Hare, Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, Robben Island and Victor Verster Prison along the way.
The route follows him from his birth in Mvezo on 18 July 1918 through student days, underground work, years in prison and his inauguration as South Africa's first democratically elected president on 10 May 1994. Most stops can be visited; the pins at Mvezo and Qunu mark the villages, not a single building.
The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 began at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, the home of Lord Carnarvon, who paid for Howard Carter's search in the Valley of the Kings. This route follows the money and the dig, from Hampshire to Luxor and Cairo.
It runs from the 1907 digs at Deir el-Bahari to the first step of KV62, Carnarvon's death in Cairo, his burial on Beacon Hill and the museum where the treasures ended up. One caveat: the exact site of the Cairo hotel is not pinned.
Mozart's life runs from a Salzburg birthplace on Getreidegasse and the cathedral font where he was baptized, through the Figaro House and Stephansdom in Vienna, to the Estates Theatre in Prague where Don Giovanni premiered in 1787.
Six stops follow him from his birth in 1756 to his funeral and burial in Vienna in 1791, and most of them can still be visited.
The Medici ruled Florence from Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace, and plotters struck at them in the Duomo in 1478. This route follows the family from Cosimo's cell in 1435 to Vasari's private corridor of 1564.
Seven stops, all in the old centre and almost all open to visitors, show how a banking family turned into a ducal court, and how they left offices, tombs and a museum behind.
In June 1791 Louis XVI and his family fled the Tuileries Palace in Paris for the fortress of Montmédy, only to be stopped at Varennes-en-Argonne after being recognised at Sainte-Menehould.
This route marks the royal coach's stops from the palace to Varennes, the citadel it never reached, and the way back through Châlons to a silent Paris. Several stops are approximate, because the sources do not name exact buildings.
Mary, Queen of Scots was born at Linlithgow Palace in 1542 and beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587, with Holyroodhouse, Loch Leven and Carlisle along the way. Her life runs from a royal cradle to a prison and a scaffold.
The route follows seven places: her birthplace, the Edinburgh palace where Rizzio was murdered, the island prison she escaped, the battlefield at Langside, two English prisons and the site of her execution. Fotheringhay Castle was demolished, so only earthworks remain.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 played out across a few kilometres of Petrograd, now Saint Petersburg: the Tauride Palace, Finland Station, the Smolny Institute, the cruiser Aurora and the Winter Palace. All five can still be seen today.
The route follows the year from the February Revolution to the October seizure of power, and separates what the sources record from the legend of the "storming" of the Winter Palace. Dates are Old Style, as used at the time.
In 1612 a Nizhny Novgorod merchant, Kuzma Minin, and Dmitry Pozharsky raised the volunteer army that cleared Polish forces from the Moscow Kremlin. The route follows it from the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin through Yaroslavl and the Trinity Lavra to Red Square.
The five stops trace the militia's march and the monuments to its leaders. The Yaroslavl pin marks the city, as the sources name no building.
The Battle of Kulikovo, fought on 8 September 1380 at Kulikovo Field near the Don, made Grand Prince Dmitry of Moscow famous as Donskoy, "of the Don". The route follows him from Trinity Lavra and Kolomna to the battlefield, Old Simonov and the Moscow Kremlin.
It covers the muster against Mamai's army, the crossing in fog, the ambush regiment, the burial of the fallen and Moscow's burning in 1382. Battlefield pins are approximate because sources give no exact spot.
Root Letter is set in Matsue, Shimane, and its backdrops copy real places: the Shimane Art Museum, the Kyomise shopping street, Lake Shinji, Yaegaki Shrine and Matsue Castle.
A man travels to Matsue to find Fumino Aya, a pen pal who vanished 15 years earlier, and questions her old classmates one by one. The route follows five real places that the game turns into scenes, from the lakeside city to a shrine tied to the Yamata-no-Orochi legend. The game's order of visits is not documented, so the stops are a sequence, not a timetable.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater turned real places into levels: the Brooklyn Banks in New York, Venice Beach, Philadelphia's Love Park, a Tijuana arena, Kona Skatepark in Jacksonville and Alcatraz Island.
The route follows Pro Skater 2 and Pro Skater 4 from city plaza to island prison, and says what each spot is like in real life. Two pins are approximate where the game names a city but not the exact spot.
Tom Clancy's The Division is set in a quarantined New York City after a Black Friday virus outbreak, and it plays out among real Manhattan landmarks: the James A. Farley Building, Madison Square Garden and the United Nations Headquarters.
This route follows the Agent from the Brooklyn tutorial and Hudson Pier into Midtown, to the base and a rooftop firefight, and on to the final assault on the UN. The game's map is its own, so the pins mark the real places behind it.
