Shuzenji

Shuzenji is the kind of place that lowers your voice for you. We had come south into the Izu Peninsula chasing hot springs and green hills, and after the coast towns with their sea glare, this inland valley felt like stepping into a cooler, older room. The Katsura river runs right through the middle of it, shallow and quick and loud, crossed by a series of small red bridges, and the old wooden inns crowd down to its banks so that from our room the water was the only thing we could hear. It is a town Japanese writers have loved for a century, and within an afternoon of arriving I understood the pull — Shuzenji makes you want to sit still and notice things.

The Temple and the Bridges

The town takes its name from Shuzen-ji, the temple founded, tradition says, by the great monk Kūkai over twelve hundred years ago, its dark halls set among maples on the slope above the river. Kūkai is also credited with striking the rock and calling forth the town’s first hot spring — Tokko-no-yu, which still bubbles up in the middle of the riverbed, a small roofed spring right in the current where pilgrims once bathed. We crossed and recrossed the red bridges just for the pleasure of it; each has a name and a wish attached — one for love, one for a good marriage, one for children — and Lia made me pause on each while she read the little plaques aloud.

There is a melancholy folded into this town’s history — a tragic exiled shogun died here in the twelfth century — and even on a bright day something of that clings pleasantly to the temple grounds. We lingered until the light went amber.

The Bamboo Path

Following the river a short way you come to the Chikurin-no-komichi, a bamboo-grove path that runs along the water, planks underfoot and tall green culms leaning overhead so the light comes down filtered and moving. At its centre is a round bamboo bench where you can lie back and look straight up into the canopy, and we did, of course, along with a scatter of others all doing the same thing and all grinning slightly at themselves for doing it. The bamboo made that dry rushing sound in the wind that I have come to think of as one of the true sounds of Japan.

It is a short path — you could walk it in three minutes — but no one does. Everyone slows. The town trains you to.

Soaking and Staying

We had come for the water and the water did not disappoint. Shuzenji has been an onsen town for centuries, and the old inns take their baths seriously; ours had a small rock-lined outdoor pool set right against the river, so that soaking at night the sound of the rapids came up through the steam. There is also a public footbath, the riverside spring, for those just passing through. We ate a long kaiseki dinner in our room — river fish, mountain vegetables, wild boar in a miso hotpot — and slept on futons with the paper screens cracked open to let the river talk all night.

In the morning a fine mist lay along the valley and the maples dripped, and we stayed a second night we had not planned on. Some towns are worth rearranging your trip for. This was one.

Getting There

Shuzenji lies inland on the Izu Peninsula and is reached via Shuzenji Station, the terminus of the Izuhakone Railway’s Sunzu Line, which connects to Mishima on the Tokaido Shinkansen — from Tokyo the whole trip runs a little over two hours. From the station a short local bus or a ten-minute taxi brings you to the old onsen quarter around the temple and the river, which is small and entirely walkable. Autumn, when the maples along the Katsura turn, is the classic season, though the green damp of early summer has its own quiet appeal. Pair it with the coast of Izu or the hot springs further down the peninsula.