Sakata

Sakata doesn’t announce itself, which is exactly why I liked it. There’s no dramatic castle on a hill, no famous shrine drawing coaches of visitors — just a flat port town on the Mogami River delta where the wind comes straight off the Sea of Japan and everything feels scoured clean. We arrived on a grey morning with the gulls loud overhead, and Lia said it reminded her of northern French fishing ports, that same unglamorous confidence. Two hundred years ago this was one of the wealthiest towns in Japan, terminus of the kitamaebune trade ships. You can still feel the ghost of that money in the width of the streets.

The Sankyo warehouses

The Sankyo Soko warehouses are the picture everyone takes, and for once the picture undersells the place. A dozen black-roofed rice storehouses stand in a long row, and behind them runs a screen of enormous zelkova trees planted to shade the rice from the summer sun and shelter it from the winter wind. We walked the lane between wall and trees while leaves came down in slow spirals. The buildings are still used, or were — sacks of rice, the smell of old wood and grain. Lia ran her hand along the plaster and said the town used to be richer than it looks, and it does look proud of it. There’s a small museum inside one warehouse, but the real thing is just the row itself, endless and rhythmic.

Somaro and the merchant’s world

In the old Sannomaru quarter we found Somaro, a former high-class teahouse now open to visitors, its rooms hung with Kyoto silk and a collection of Kitamae-ship treasures the merchants brought home. At midday a young maiko performed a short dance on the tatami stage, and we sat on cushions with a handful of others in near silence, the shamisen thin and precise. I’m not usually one for arranged culture, but there was something honest about it here — this port had bought this refinement fair and square, hauled it up from Kyoto by sea. Afterward we ate at a counter nearby, grilled local fish and rice so good it needed nothing, the cook barely looking up from his work.

Hiyoriyama and the old lighthouse

We ended on Hiyoriyama, the little hill park where merchants once climbed to read the weather before sending ships out. There’s a small wooden lighthouse up there, one of the oldest in Japan, hexagonal and weathered grey. From the top of the slope we watched the sun go down into the Sea of Japan, the whole sky burning orange over the water, and on a clear stretch the great cone of Mount Chokai stood dark to the north. A couple of locals walked their dogs past us without a glance, at home in a view I’d have crossed the world for. Lia leaned on the rail and said this was the kind of place people mean when they say a town has good bones.

Getting There

Sakata sits on the Sea-of-Japan coast in northern Yamagata, reached most easily via the Uetsu Main Line — limited-express trains run down from Akita or up from Niigata along a beautiful coastal stretch. From Tokyo the usual route is Shinkansen to Niigata, then the Inaho limited express, roughly four hours all in; there’s also a small airport with Tokyo flights. The town is flat and compact — rent a bicycle at the station and you can link the warehouses, Somaro, and Hiyoriyama in a single unhurried afternoon, with the wind at your back.