Two lovingly preserved Japanese villages

We step off the bus at Magome and look in disbelief at the steep cobbled slope winding up the hill in front of us. In the past there would have been scrawny porters elbowing each other out of the way, vying to cart our bags. Had we been great lords we would have been carried up by palanquin, with thousands of retainers and guards barking at the peasants to get down on their knees. But in 21st-century Japan there’s nothing for it but to walk.

We sigh, pick up our bags and set off up the hill. Behind us Mount Ena rises spectacularly. A huge waterwheel slowly turns, creaking and splashing, and a narrow stream trickles noisily alongside the road. There are no electric wires overhead and no cars and every now and then we catch a whiff of wood smoke.

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I’m here to immerse myself in 19th-century Japan. The novel I’m working on begins here on the Inner Mountain Road, where it cuts through the forests and villages of the Kiso Valley, in the Nagano prefecture. The rule of the shoguns ended only 140 years ago, but in most of Japan the flavour of that era is utterly lost. But here in Magome and its neighbouring post town, Tsumago, it has been lovingly preserved, along with the five-miles of cobbled pathway between the two.

This is part of the Nakasendo, the Inner Mountain Road, one of the five great highways that crossed Japan. Three hundred miles long, it connected Kyoto, where the emperor lived, and Edo, the shogun’s capital. Under the rule of the shogun, until 1868, no wheeled transport was allowed other than for goods, the idea being to keep a tight grip over the movement of travellers. So even the busiest highways needed only to be wide enough for horses, palanquins and the troops of samurai who accompanied the feudal lords on their enforced processions to Edo to pay homage to the shogun.

Magome is a “loincloth town”, a single street, long and narrow like a loincloth, existing solely to service the road and the travellers who use it. The charming wooden houses with their tiled roofs, some held in place with stones, are almost all inns or eating houses. Today the road is buzzing with tourists, mainly Japanese, in search of a breath of the past, and an increasing number of Chinese, much in evidence nowadays in Japan. In the past the street would have been thronged with pilgrims, merchants and messengers, the famous “flying feet” who carried letters faster than Victorian England’s postal service.

Each post town had a honjin, a palatial inn suitable for a feudal lord, and the processions had to be carefully timed so that there was never more than one lord staying there.

Magome’s honjin is rather special. It was the home of a well-loved writer called Toson Shimazaki (1872-1943) whose most famous novel, Before the Dawn, published in 1932, is one of the inspirations that has brought me here. It is the story of life in this town and, most particularly, of his father, who was the headman.

Part of the honjin is a memorial to Shimazaki. Beyond the gateway is a high stone wall to protect distinguished guests from the vulgar gaze. Inside are spacious grounds and a large country manor. The well with a bucket on a pulley, the stables and the palanquin shed are all there, together with heavy wooden saddles cushioned with woven rice straw, huge lacquered stirrups, a spinning wheel, a loom, and stones for grinding rice.

The palatial honjin is a world apart from the modest lodging houses and eating dens for ordinary travellers. By the time it gets dark most of the tourists have disappeared. We sit outside on a bench watching the sun set over the mountains. Lanterns glow outside the houses and sounds of carousing emerge from the inns along the street. At the Tajimaya guest house, we have dinner sitting on the tatami-matted floor of the living area, then climb some very steep stairs to our cosy corner room.

The next day we take our bags to the tourist office from where they will be transported to our next destination – the modern equivalent of hiring porters. Delightfully free of baggage, we climb the long village street to the end. The path winds on around a couple more houses, then plunges into woodland.

We walk beside a rushing river, through bamboo glades and groves of cryptomeria trees. The trunks stretch endlessly skyward, ending high above us in a dense canopy of leaves. So little light filters through that no leaves grow on the lower branches. It’s a natural cathedral.

In places the path is so steep it’s cut into steps. We come to a small village. Ahead of us an old woman plods along, bent under the enormous basket on her back. We pass a woman in a bonnet working in her garden but other than that there’s no one around.

By now we’re keen for a rest. In the 19th century there were teahouses at regular intervals for just this purpose. We see one, a picturesque dark building with slatted wooden doors. We peer inside. The place hasn’t been used for years.

We finally reach the teahouse at the top of Magome Pass. The approach is a precipitous path winding along the edge of the mountain, which looks exactly as it does in the 19th-century print by the artist Hiroshige. The teahouse is still there but it, too, is shut. Even the Coca-Cola machine doesn’t work. We sit on the bench for a while, gazing down onto the Kiso valley. If there are other walkers on this path, they are certainly not in evidence. We are free to imagine ourselves back in any century we choose.

A postman wears a 19th-century uniform

An easy three hours after we left Magome, we arrive at the next post town, Tsumago. While Magome is picture-book perfect, Tsumago feels more like a working village. Even the postman wears 19th-century uniform. Its honjin is even grander than the one in Magome. We tiptoe across the vast tatami-matted rooms where emperor Meiji rested on one of his journeys around the country and admire the beautiful fretwork above the paper doors and the gardens; one with a pond full of carp, the other a moss garden with a couple of carefully-placed stone lanterns. There’s also a museum here, with old matchlocks and paintings showing what happened to peasants who dared chop down a tree for their own use: “One tree, one head” was the law.

In the evening we think of going for a walk but there’s no moon and no street lighting. It’s pitch black. Instead we sit outside, listening to the rushing of the river and strange unidentifiable animal noises in the undergrowth and smelling the fresh smells of the countryside. It’s the nearest it’s possible to get in this day and age to old Japan.