The quiet magic of Japan’s fourth island

The smallest of Japan’s four major islands, Shikoku – located in the relatively warm south – is known for its “lush” mountains, dramatic gorges and slow pace of life.

For anyone looking to discover a quieter side of the country, it’s a wonderful option, says Laura Moser in Travel + Leisure, offering great food and some “dazzling” cultural sites too. You can reach it by rail from Tokyo and then crossing bridges between smaller islands in the Seto Inland Sea, the narrow arm of the Pacific that separates Shikoku from Japan’s main island, Honshu. On my trip, I took the sleeper from Tokyo Station to Takamatsu, Shikoku’s second city, on its northeast coast.

Takamatsu’s main claim to fame is the “meticulously landscaped”, 400-year-old Ritsurin Garden, where I took a ride on a wasen, a traditional flat-bottomed boat like a Venetian gondola, to glide under bridges, and watched masters of niwaki – the art of sculpting garden trees – “work their magic from high ladders”. But there are other notable sights nearby, including the Kanamaruza, Japan’s oldest kabuki theatre, built in 1835, with woven bamboo ceilings, paper lanterns and a separate entrance for samurai.

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Several nearby islands have also gained reputations as “art-and-design” destinations in recent years. The best known is Naoshima, renowned for its world-class art museums and outdoor sculptures, but Megijima, “tiny, mountainous” Ogijima and others all offer their own attractions.

I also visited the southern city of Kochi, home to a spectacular 18th-century castle and a superb food market (a good place to try the local speciality: flame-seared bonito with wasabi and sliced garlic). And I explored parts of the island’s wild, mountainous interior, including the “remote, otherworldly” Iya Valley, with its “mind-blowing” vine bridges, dating back to the 12th century, which are now re-woven every three years. I stayed in a lovely hotel, the Iyaonsen, which lies in a valley and has a riverside hot-spring pool from which you can watch the “shifting” mists drift up the wooded hillside opposite.