Takeshima Island (Gamagori)

On the coast at Gamagori, in the eastern part of Aichi, a small island sits just off the shore, dark green with forest and reached on foot by a long bridge over the sea. This is Takeshima. It is only about seven hundred metres around, yet it has been a National Natural Monument for close to a century, and at its heart stands one of Japan's seven great Benten shrines. Walking out across the water to a sacred island, with the bay on either side, makes one of the easiest and most memorable half-hours on the whole Mikawa coast — and it costs nothing.

An island bridge and a southern forest

The bridge is the first pleasure. Some 387 metres long, the present crossing was built in 1986, and it carries you out over open water to the island, which lies about four hundred metres from the shore. What waits on the other side is stranger than it looks. Though it is close enough to walk to, Takeshima's forest is warm-temperate and evergreen, full of southern plants that do not grow on the facing mainland — some 238 kinds in all. For that peculiarity the whole island was made a National Natural Monument in 1930, so the little wood you walk through is protected ground, a floating scrap of southern forest kept much as it has always been.

Yaotomi Shrine and Takeshima Benten

At the centre of the island, up a flight of stone steps through the trees, stands Yaotomi Shrine. It was founded in the late twelfth century by the celebrated court poet Fujiwara no Toshinari, and it enshrines Ichikishima-hime, a goddess long identified with Benten and honoured for good fortune, safe childbirth and happy matches. Known as Takeshima Benten, it is counted among the seven great Benten shrines of Japan, in the company of Enoshima, Chikubushima and Itsukushima. Four smaller shrines stand elsewhere on the island, five in all, linked by a path that circles it through the forest. At New Year the bridge fills with people coming to make their first prayers of the year, but on an ordinary morning it is a quiet place, the sea sounding below the trees.

Good to know

The island and its bridge are open at all hours and cost nothing, which makes an early or late visit easy — a good idea in summer, when the bridge and the stone steps have little shade and the middle of the day turns hot. In strong wind or rough seas the bridge can be closed for safety, so it is worth a look at the forecast before setting out. Takeshima is about a fifteen-minute walk from JR Gamagori Station, on the Tokaido Main Line from Nagoya, with free parking near the shore for those driving. Along the seafront back on the mainland you will find a small, much-loved aquarium and, up on the hill, the 1930s Gamagori Classic Hotel; in June the hydrangeas of Katahara Hydrangea Village, on a hot-spring hillside in the same city, make a natural pairing. For keeping comfortable while you are out in the season, see our notes on staying cool through central Japan's summer.