Japan's Golden Route: Tokyo to Hiroshima

The Tōkaidō, the eastern sea road, was the most important of five highways the Tokugawa shogunate organised from Edo in the early 17th century. It ran about 490 km along the Pacific coast from Nihonbashi in Edo to Sanjō Ōhashi in Kyoto, with 53 official post towns where travellers changed horses and porters, ate and slept. Regional lords and their retinues marched it every other year under the alternate-attendance system, which filled the inns and spread Edo fashions into the provinces.

Most travellers walked. The journey usually took around two weeks, and the hardest stage was the climb over the Hakone pass, with a shogunal checkpoint at the lake. Rivers were a second barrier: the Ōi river had no bridge on purpose, for defence, and travellers were carried across on porters' shoulders or on platforms, waiting days when the water was high.

The railway followed the same line. The Tōkaidō main line between Tokyo and Kobe was completed in 1889, and in 1964, nine days before the Tokyo Olympics opened, the first Shinkansen started running between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka at up to 210 km/h. The trip that had taken two weeks on foot took four hours, later cut to about 2 h 20 min on today's Nozomi. The line was extended west as the San'yō Shinkansen, reaching Okayama in 1972 and Hakata via Hiroshima in 1975.

The Tōkaidō Shinkansen is still one of the busiest high-speed lines in the world, with Nozomi trains leaving Tokyo up to about every 3–5 minutes at peak times. It has never had a passenger fatality from a collision or derailment in service. Construction of the Chūō maglev, which would link Tokyo and Nagoya through the mountains, has been delayed by a dispute over water in Shizuoka; the opening date is not fixed (check).

Nara was Japan's first permanent capital from 710, built on a Chinese grid plan. In 794 the court moved to Heian-kyō, today's Kyoto, partly to escape the power of Nara's Buddhist temples. Kyoto remained the emperor's city for over a thousand years, and its culture was aristocratic: poetry contests, incense games, seasonal colours in layered robes, and later the tea ceremony and the Nō theatre patronised by the Ashikaga shōguns.

Real power moved east with the warriors. The Kamakura shogunate of 1185 ruled from the coast south of today's Tokyo, and after 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu made Edo, a small castle town on marshland, the seat of military government. Edo was planned around the castle, with lords' residences in the high city to the west and merchants and craftspeople packed into the low city along the canals to the east. By the 18th century it was one of the largest cities in the world.

The two cities built different tastes. Kyoto prized restraint, understatement and precedent; Edo's townspeople made a style called iki, sharp, stylish and a little defiant, and gave the world kabuki, woodblock prints and street food. Osaka, between them, was the kitchen of the country: the rice exchange at Dōjima traded some of the world's first futures contracts, and the city's merchants, not its samurai, set the tone.

In 1868 the Meiji emperor moved to Edo, renamed Tokyo, the eastern capital. No law ever formally moved the capital, a point some in Kyoto still make with a smile. Kyoto was spared the heaviest bombing in 1945 and kept much of its pre-modern fabric; Tokyo burned twice in the 20th century, in the 1923 earthquake and in the air raids of 1945, which is why its old buildings are mostly rebuilt.

Japan's food divides roughly at the Sekigahara gap, between Nagoya and Kyoto. East of it, broths are darker, based on bonito and stronger soy sauce; west of it, in Kansai, dashi leans on kombu kelp and pale, saltier usukuchi soy, so a bowl of udon looks lighter in Kyoto than in Tokyo but tastes just as deep. Even instant noodles are sold in eastern and western versions.

Tokyo's classic foods came from Edo's street stalls: nigiri sushi made with fish from Tokyo Bay, tempura, soba and eel. The city now has more restaurants with Michelin stars than any other, but the everyday highlights are still the counter meals, a set lunch at a sushi bar or ramen near a big station. Monjayaki, a runny griddle batter, is the local answer to Osaka's okonomiyaki.

Kyoto cooking grew from court and temple food. Kaiseki, the multi-course meal that started with the tea ceremony, follows the season on every plate; shōjin ryōri is Buddhist vegetarian cooking; obanzai is the home cooking of Kyoto households, small dishes of vegetables, tofu and dried fish. Nara is known for kakinoha-zushi, fish and rice wrapped in persimmon leaves.

Osaka's motto is kuidaore, to eat until you drop, and its food is cheap, hot and quick: takoyaki octopus balls, okonomiyaki, kushikatsu skewers dipped once in the shared sauce. Hiroshima answers with its own layered okonomiyaki, built on a crepe with cabbage, noodles and egg, and with oysters from the Inland Sea. Miyajima sells grilled conger eel on rice and momiji manjū, the maple-leaf cake.

Hiroshima was a castle town and, by the 1940s, a major army base and port. At 08:15 on 6 August 1945 a US B-29 dropped a uranium bomb that exploded about 600 m above the city centre. Tens of thousands died that day; by the end of 1945 the death toll is estimated at around 140,000, with many more dying later from injuries and radiation. Three days later a second bomb destroyed much of Nagasaki, and Japan announced its surrender on 15 August.

The Atomic Bomb Dome was the Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, a Czech-designed exhibition building of 1915. It stood almost directly below the blast and its shell was left as it stood. After debate about whether to demolish it, the city decided in 1966 to preserve it permanently; UNESCO listed it in 1996. The Peace Memorial Park, designed by Kenzō Tange, lines up the museum, the cenotaph and the dome on a single axis.

The city rebuilt fast and has made peace its public identity. Each 6 August a ceremony in the park is followed by lanterns floated on the river in the evening. The Children's Peace Monument commemorates Sasaki Sadako, who developed leukaemia after the bombing and folded paper cranes in hospital; schoolchildren from across Japan still send strings of cranes. The survivors, the hibakusha, have given testimony for decades, and their organisation Nihon Hidankyō received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024.

Visiting well takes time and a little preparation. The museum's main building shows personal belongings and images of injuries, and many visitors need a pause afterwards; Shukkeien garden and the river banks are quiet places for that. Survivor testimony sessions and volunteer guides are available in English on many days (check).

Two religions share the route, often the same ground. Shinto shrines (jinja) honour kami, the spirits of places, ancestors and natural forces; Buddhist temples (tera or -ji) arrived from the continent in the 6th century. For about a thousand years they were mixed, with kami treated as local forms of buddhas, until the Meiji government ordered them separated in 1868. Most people visit both without seeing a conflict: births and festivals at shrines, funerals at temples.

To tell them apart, look at the entrance. A torii, the two-post gate, means a shrine; a roofed gate with guardian figures (Niō) and a large incense burner means a temple. Shrines often have a pair of lion-dogs (komainu) or, at Inari shrines, foxes. Temples have a main hall with images of the Buddha, often a pagoda, and a bell; shrines have a worship hall in front of a closed inner hall where the kami resides.

The etiquette is simple. At a shrine, rinse left hand, right hand and mouth at the water basin, then at the hall bow twice, clap twice, pray and bow once. At a temple, do not clap: put a coin in the box, press the hands together quietly and bow. Take off shoes where there is a step up and a shoe rack, keep voices low inside halls, and check for signs before taking photos indoors.

The route passes the classics. Nara's Tōdai-ji houses a bronze Great Buddha about 15 m tall in one of the largest wooden halls in the world. Kyoto's Fushimi Inari, head of some 30,000 Inari shrines, climbs its hill under about 10,000 torii given by businesses and families. Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima is built over the tidal flat, so that at high tide the halls and the great torii appear to float.