It must have taken some nerve for Shoin Yoshida to scramble into a tiny boat and row out in the blackness of night to the hulking American ship, groaning with guns, anchored in Shimoda Bay. Japan had for 200 years been severed from the west, its isolation enforced by the shogunate families who had controlled the island nation for two centuries. In 1854, the year of Shoin’s escapade, few dared fraternise with barbarians. The punishment for those who did, and came back to discuss it, was death.

The patriot Shoin avoided execution, at least initially. But his project to learn from US naval hero Commodore Perry, the very enemy then seeking to prise Japan open for western trade, ended in abject failure, a dénouement much admired in Japan. Perry’s men simply handed Shoin back to the Japanese authorities, who caged him, before returning him to his native Hagi in Japan’s far west.

It was in Hagi, ostensibly under house arrest, that Shoin began instructing the disciples who became the intellectual firepower of Japan’s remarkable, if subsequently tragic, modernisation. Under the Meiji Restoration, an elite cadre of samurai inspired by Shoin and other like-minded prophets, dragged Japan by the top-knot from its feudal isolation. Some of these followers scattered from Hagi across the globe to learn about railways and parliaments and guns and Savile Row suits. (The Japanese word for suit is still sebiro, though most Japanese are unaware of its origins.)

Shoin was no foppish admirer of western culture. To keep foreigners from overrunning Japan, he thought the country must sharpen its technological and military armoury. As Robert Louis Stevenson, an admirer, notes: “He had it upon him to keep out these all-powerful foreigners, whom it is one of his chief merits to have helped introduce.”

Off the beaten track: An FT correspondent’s guide to a ‘lost’ Japan

Any traveller to Japan is bound to encounter a chorus of lament from a certain (gloomy) genre of Japan experts about the “neonification and concretisation” of the country, writes Gwen Robinson. Like Alex Kerr, author of Lost Japan, they despair about “concrete- shrouded mountains” and polluted seashores, the spread of ugly infrastructure and the death of rustic villages. Yet, without too much effort or expense, it is entirely possible to discover a not so “lost” world.

Koyasan

Half a day’s travel from Tokyo, for instance, is Mount Koya (known as Koyasan) in the western prefecture of Wakayama. A twilight or dawn walk around the sacred mountain, reached by cable car, provides an intense blast of that “other-worldly” feeling. A paved pathway lit by stone lanterns snakes through a deep forest of ancient Japanese cedars towards a temple complex known as Okunoin.

From the early 9th century, the mountain became the headquarters of the Shingon Buddhist sect. But you don’t have to be religious to sense the spiritual power here. In this dense wood are an estimated 500,000 graves, some stretching back to the 9th century and containing the remains of historical figures such as Kobo Daishi, the sect’s founder.

More than 120 temples are in the village, a short walk from the forest. About half function as shukubo (temple lodgings), where visitors can stay from about Y6,000 (£30) per person, including two vegetarian meals and participation in dawn prayers.

www.japan-guide.com
Tel: +81 736 56 2616

Kamikochi

For wilderness lovers, the walking trails and small mountain huts around Kamikochi, a scenic mountain valley nestling in the soaring Japan Alps in central Honshu, the main island, are as far off the beaten track as you can get by public transport. While many hikers visit in the height of summer, the crowds never seem excessive. One reason is the difficulty of access – private cars and tourist coaches are banned.

The small tourist village that is the jump-off point to the mountains is a 30-minute shuttle bus-ride from one of two car parks or an 80-minute bus ride from Shinshimashima, the nearest train station, along a mountain road. From Tokyo, a train to Shinshimashima, via a change at Matsumoto, takes about four hours.

The surrounding mountains feature networks of trails that range from gentle walks to rugged terrain. Places to stay in Kamikochi include the old Imperial Hotel lodge but there are much cheaper pensions or the nearby camping ground.

www.kamikochi.or.jp
www.alpico.co.jp

Tsurunoyu

Any guide to Japan’s nether regions should include a recommendation for an onsen, or hotspring resort. One of the oldest, most atmospheric and most remote is Tsurunoyu, an inn in the Nyuto onsen area of Akita, deep in the mountains of northern Honshu.

Here, the sprawling, wooden inn takes pride in its traditions as a bathing place for samurai in the 1600s.

But the five outdoor baths are the real attraction here, with their hot, milky water, famed for its beneficial effects.

As Tsurunoyu is one of a minority of inns offering konnyoku (mixed bathing), it’s advisable to do some elementary reading on onsen etiquette. The trip from Tokyo, via bullet train and two buses, takes about four hours.

www.japanese
guesthouses.com

Shikoku

For a truly eclectic escape, with options for everyone from art lovers to hikers, the island of Shikoku, just across the sea from Osaka, offers remote coastal scenery, rustic farms, hotspring villages and bullfights.

Before heading to the sacred mountain of Koyasan, Kobo Daishi, founder of the Shingon Buddhist sect, spent his early life in Shikoku and has bestowed on the island its famous pilgrimage route of 88 temples.

Benesse House, an art museum and hotel complex on Naoshima Island, just off Shikoku’s northern coast, is well worth a visit.

And if you seek luxury, even off the beaten track, try the Utoco Deep Sea Therapy Centre and Hotel, a spa resort on the island’s southern coast.

www.jnto.go.jp
Shu Uemura Utoco spa, tel: +81-88 722 1811; www.utocods.co.jp
Benesse House, tel: +81-87 892 2030

If Shoin, who was executed at 29 for masterminding a failed assassination plot, is a back-to-front sort of hero, then Hagi is a back-to-front sort of place. The port that inspired Japan’s modernisation has sunk back into its own past. It should be among Japan’s most famous sights, yet is little known. No Japanese city breathes Japan’s feudal air as deeply. Few places feel as conservative or further removed from the culture of Michelin three-star restaurants. Hagi is the coelacanth of Japan, the ancient survivor that people assume to be extinct.

Crumpled between the mountains that hide it from the rest of Japan and the sea that hides it from the rest of the world, Hagi is invisible to the outside world. Looking down for the first time on the city and its island-dotted bay, one cannot help feeling like an ancient explorer stumbling upon a lost civilisation.

In summer, the heat is oppressive, the air fetid and thick with the sound of cicadas. The old quarters of Jokamachi and Teramachi, where samurai and prosperous merchants once lived, are pancake-flat. Its temples, wooden houses and storerooms, grey-tiled roofs and overgrown cemeteries look more like a film mock-up of Japan than the real thing. Penned in by whitewashed walls and mandarin groves, visitors find themselves in a feudal labyrinth. Japan rarely feels more foreign.

I discovered Hagi by accident during a reporting assignment to trace the intellectual roots of the idealistic nationalism then being pedalled by a prominent politician. Supporters of the candidate treated with reverence the dusty Shoin Shrine (site of his prison/school) and other related sites, including a monument to Shinsaku Takasugi, a disciple who had founded a revolutionary fighting force in which non-samurai were permitted to enlist.

The internationalist pretensions of Hagi’s most famous son notwithstanding, the foreigners living there these days are few and far between. When David Mitchell, a British author, absconded to Ireland last year, he left behind, to the best of his knowledge, just one representative of the outside world: Bertil Person, a Swedish potter who came to study Hagi’s milk-white ceramics 40 years ago and forgot to leave.

Mitchell says that Hagi’s population of some 50,000 seems to be shrinking by the day, a conclusion he had reached from the length of the obituary columns and brevity of those announcing births and marriages. “After you are here for a couple of weeks, real Japan kind of ebbs away and that illusion, that the whole country looks like this, begins to creep back,” he says. “I think that partly explains the conservatism of those who are born here and never really leave.”

Not all of Hagi is picturesque. The Yado Tomoe, the ryokan (traditional inn) where I stayed on my most recent visit, sat beside a Bridgestone tyre outlet and across the concrete-lined river from an industrial chimney stack. Inside, a fantasyland of tatami (straw mat flooring), kimono, stone gardens, bamboo and hot-spring waters awaited – though not for another two hours. Check-in time in such establishments is not until three o’clock. (Chuck-out time: 10am.)

I spent my bonus two hours at Hagi Shinkai, the Sea Heart, a seafood restaurant that has the echoing atmosphere of a municipal swimming baths. Behind the rustic counter are three large pools of sea-green water, a wooden plank straddling each. An order, say of squid, sets the waiter careering along the wooden beam, large net in hand, and the squid thrashing around the pool in a delusional act of self-preservation. A few minutes later, dinner – still squirming on the platter – is served.

Names of fish were chalked on thin slats of wood. Okoze, an evil-looking stonefish, and fugu, poisonous puffer fish, were among the offerings. Then there was octopus, sea bream, crab and pallets of divinely creamy uni – the off-putting English name, “sea urchin”, has probably saved the delicious little creature from global extinction. My flounder sashimi, fresh, though unequivocally dead, was perfection.

An evening in a Japanese ryokan can be a near-religious experience. Much of it is spent in one’s room, sat on the tatami, while a woman in a kimono – speaking in keigo, the respect-language in which simple verbs don entirely different linguistic garb – shuffles in and out of the room. Each time she slides open the rice-paper door it is to set some new miracle before you: grassy green tea, homemade pickles, sweet biscuits, sugared preserves, Kirin beer and, later, a kaiseki meal with dozens of tiny delicacies, each laid out like artwork on ceramic or lacquerware.

After dinner, returning from the hot spa, the futon has been laid out. One rule of Japan is that the more expensive the ryokan, the more uncomfortable one’s pillow: mine was of brick-sized proportions and seemingly filled with dead bees. The crunching in one’s ear aside, the hot water and hot sake are virtually guaranteed to send you into the deepest of sleeps.

Following eviction from paradise the next morning, I went back to the old samurai quarters. Some of the bigger houses, many with magnificent Japanese gardens, are open to the public. There are also little galleries displaying Hagi pottery, with its creamy white and pink-spotted glaze. Considered among the finest in a nation rattling with exquisite ceramics, Hagi techniques fittingly turn out to be foreign. The founders were two Korean brothers who began to make tea ceremony bowls from local clay in 1604. Such fine pieces were meant only for the samurai class. To broaden their potential market, or so the story goes, canny potters started chiselling a nick into the base of each piece. Commoners were then free to buy the “spoiled” specimens. Descendants of the original Korean brothers are among those still making pottery, their skills passed down the male line. Most pieces retain the distinctive nick.

Later that day, I found myself drawn to the sound of shouting and eventually discovered some high-school kids playing baseball on a dusty practice ground. On the bench next to mine, two men in their 70s sat in quiet contemplation as dusk settled. We got chatting and, when they introduced themselves, both removed their baseball caps with old-world politeness.

Contrary to my initial expectations, they were far from conservative in their views and remarkably knowledgeable about global affairs. “We like to travel when we can,” said one, rattling off a list of destinations from Paris to Guilin in China. “Oh yes,” responded the other. “Everything’s changing so fast. Not like here. There’s not much to keep the youngsters here these days. They’re all drawn to the big cities, and beyond.”

From our bench, with the sound of bat against ball in the background, we toured the globe. My new acquaintances had much to say on the subject of China’s roaring economy, on the quality of fruit in Spain (not so good, apparently), on politics in Tokyo (not so good, apparently) and on the engineering challenges posed by the Channel Tunnel. They opined on farming subsidies, the contrasts between Japanese and US baseball and the relation of both to cricket, the shifting tides of Sino-Japanese relations and the merits of being multilingual.

Here we were, on this perfect evening, quite removed from Japan, let alone the world beyond. Yet, true to their city’s roots, these sons of Hagi were quietly imagining the rest of the planet into existence.

David Pilling is the FT’s Tokyo bureau chief