Shikoku is the least-traveled of Japan’s four main islands, and that is exactly why those who make the journey come away so fond of it. Tucked south of the Inland Sea, it is a place of mountains and rivers, small cities and slow coasts, best known for the great Buddhist pilgrimage that loops around its edge — an 88-temple circuit that has drawn white-clad walkers for over a thousand years. Even for visitors with no intention of walking it, that pilgrim spirit sets the island’s tone: humble, welcoming, and quietly spiritual.
The island’s most rewarding city is Matsuyama, watched over by a handsome hilltop castle and home to Dōgo Onsen, reputedly the oldest hot spring in Japan and the model, it is said, for the bathhouse in a certain beloved animated film. To soak in its wooden halls, then wander back through the old streets in a yukata, is to touch something very old and very comforting. Nearby, the town of Kotohira guards Konpira-san, a revered shrine reached by a long stone stairway of more than a thousand steps, climbing past shops and teahouses to sweeping views over the plain.
In recent years Shikoku’s northern waters have become the setting for something unexpected and wonderful. Out in the Seto Inland Sea, the once-declining islands of Naoshima and Teshima have been transformed into a renowned canvas for contemporary art and architecture — museums built into hillsides, installations set among fishing villages, and outdoor sculptures gazing out to sea. Reaching them by ferry, cycling between galleries under a wide sky, is one of the most singular experiences in the country.
Shikoku asks for a little patience — its rail and road connections are quieter than the mainland’s, and the rhythm here is deliberately gentle — but that is precisely its charm. This is Japan with room to breathe: an island of ancient baths and mountain shrines, of pilgrims and ferries, where a bold experiment in modern art now coexists with some of the country’s oldest traditions. Come for the quiet, and stay for the sense that you have found somewhere most visitors never do.
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Places in Shikoku
japan Anan
A long, unhurried stretch of Tokushima coast where loggerhead turtles still haul themselves up dark beaches to nest, and a scatter of green islands breaks the Pacific into quieter water. It is Shikoku's warm, salt-bleached edge, far from any crowd.
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japan Cape Ashizuri
The wild southwestern tip of Kochi, where Shikoku runs out of land in a flourish of black cliffs, subtropical greenery, and a white lighthouse that has watched over some of the roughest water in Japan for over a century. It is remote, weather-beaten, and gloriously empty — a place to feel small in the good way. We drove a long way for it and the cape paid us back with interest.
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japan Imabari
A working port on the Seto Inland Sea where the Shimanami Kaidō lands back on Shikoku after leaping island to island on impossible bridges. Imabari smells of the sea and of freshly pressed cotton, and moves at the speed of a bicycle.
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japan Iya Valley
A deep, mist-wrapped gorge in the heart of Shikoku, laced with vine bridges and thatched houses and a strange population of straw scarecrows. Iya is the Japan we thought had disappeared — and hadn't.
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japan Kanonji
A breezy Kagawa town on the Inland Sea where a giant coin lies raked into the beach sand, said to bless whoever looks upon it. Above it a pine-shaded hilltop shrine, and inland a mountaintop temple reached by ropeway over the whole silver sea.
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japan Kōchi
South-coast Shikoku, warm and open-hearted, with one of Japan's few surviving original castles and a fish grilled over burning straw. Kōchi felt like the country exhaling — slower, sunnier, and unafraid of a drink.
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japan Kotohira
A temple town in Kagawa on the island of Shikoku, built around Konpira-san — a mountainside shrine reached by more than 785 stone steps lined with old shops. It is a pilgrimage and a climb and a bowl of Sanuki udon at the top of it all. Earnest, a little breathless, and richly rewarded by the view.
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japan Matsuyama
The largest city on Shikoku, built around Dōgo Onsen — one of the oldest hot springs in Japan and its grand wooden bathhouse. A hilltop castle, rattling streetcars, and a warm, literary, unhurried spirit all its own.
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japan Mima
A river town in Tokushima where a single Edo street survives almost whole — the white-plastered homes of the old indigo merchants, crowned with ornate fireproof udatsu gables that were once a quiet boast of wealth. It is history you can walk down slowly, with the Yoshino River at its back.
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japan Muroto
A cape flung out into the Pacific at the raw edge of Kōchi, where the land is still rising out of the sea. Muroto is uplifted rock, subtropical green, and a lighthouse that has watched the dark water for over a century. We went to feel small, and it obliged.
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japan Naoshima
A tiny island in the Seto Inland Sea transformed into one of the world's great open-air art museums.
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japan Naruto
A ragged corner of Shikoku where the tide itself roars. Naruto is whirlpools, a great white bridge, and the strange calm of a museum that holds the world's masterpieces in ceramic. We came for the water and stayed for the quiet after it.
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japan Niyodo River
A Kochi river whose water goes past clear into something almost unreal — a pale, luminous turquoise the locals call 'Niyodo blue'. It pools under mossed boulders, spills over low falls, and rewards anyone willing to drive its long green valley.
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japan Ōboke
A gorge cut deep into the Tokushima mountains, where the Yoshino river turns jade and white between walls of folded rock. Pleasure boats drift and rafts crash through the rapids, and just beyond lies the hidden Iya Valley.
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japan Ōzu
An Ehime castle town on the Hiji river, sometimes called a little Kyoto for its old streets and riverside calm. A faithfully rebuilt wooden keep, a hillside villa looking out over the water, and cormorant fishermen working the summer nights. Riverine, unhurried, and easy to love.
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japan Saijo
A quiet Ehime city that drinks straight from the mountain, where artesian springs bubble up in doorways and rice paddies alike beneath Ishizuchi, the highest peak in western Japan. It is a place of clear water, sacred stone, and autumn festival drums.
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japan Shimanto
A green fold of rural Kōchi wrapped around the Shimanto, often called the last clear river in Japan. Here bridges duck under the floods instead of fighting them, and the days move at the pace of slow water.
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japan Shōdoshima
An Inland Sea island that smells of olives and the sea, where a Mediterranean daydream sits beside a raw stone gorge and soy-sauce breweries fill the air with dark, sweet steam. Shōdoshima was our slow goodbye to the Setouchi.
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japan Sukumo
A quiet bay town in the far southwestern corner of Kochi, where the days end in sunsets so famous they've been given a name. There is little to 'do' here, which is precisely the point — Sukumo is a place to slow down and watch the light leave the water.
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japan Takamatsu
A port city where a feudal garden meets the tide and a castle keeps its feet in seawater. Takamatsu gave Lia and me our first taste of the Inland Sea, and our first bowl of udon that mattered.
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japan Teshima
A small Seto Inland Sea island where contemporary art museums blend into rice terraces tended by elderly farmers.
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japan Tokushima
A city that spends most of the year quietly and then, for a few August nights, loses its mind to dance. Between the whirlpools of Naruto and the drum of the Awa Odori, Tokushima taught us to stop watching and join in.
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japan Mount Tsurugi
Shikoku's second-highest peak and one of the gentlest sacred summits in Japan — a mountain you can walk up over grassy ridges and boardwalks, with a shrine near the top and views that on a clear day run all the way to the sea.
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japan Uchiko
An Ehime town that once grew rich on wax, where a single street of ochre-plastered merchant houses has been kept just as it was. There is a jewel of a Meiji-era kabuki theatre, green hills at every turn, and almost no one else about. Quietly, unshowily elegant.
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japan Uwajima
A salt-air port at the ragged bottom of Ehime, where an original castle keeps watch over a ria coast strung with pearl rafts. It is a town of bull-sumo bellows, mikan groves, and a bay that turns silver at dusk.
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japan Yawatahama
An Ehime port town where the hillsides above the harbour are stacked with mandarin terraces, and the ferries slip out across the strait toward Kyushu. A place of citrus, salt air, and the particular restlessness of a town that has always faced the sea.
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japan Zentsūji
A quiet Kagawa temple town grown up around the birthplace of Kūkai, the monk who shaped Japanese Buddhism. A great five-storey pagoda watches over pilgrims in white, and the local udon is some of the best on the island.
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