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Sanriku Fukkō NP, Aomori / Iwate / Miyagi
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
One stretch of this “walking” trail crosses Matsushima Bay by boat. Eight local captains run a special crossing between islands with no scheduled service, fitting it around their regular work in tiny fishing boats called danbekko.
The trail’s seed was planted before the 2011 disaster: long-distance hiking writer Noriyoshi Kato had proposed a Sanriku coastal trail. After the earthquake, living with ALS and using a wheelchair, he urged the Environment Ministry to create one as part of recovery.
A rest stop in Yamada began with a kindness received farther north: local walker Reiko Sasaki was invited into a stranger’s home while waiting for a train in Aomori. Back home, she and neighbors turned an old shiitake-drying shed into the “Mushroom House” for hikers.
In Yamada, the route passes a sheltered bay dotted with oyster and scallop rafts. The town’s oyster hut serves shell-on oysters steamed at the table, with an all-you-can-eat option during oyster season—a memorable taste of a working coastal community.
The trail’s symbol quietly sketches its north-to-south route from Aomori to Fukushima—and also looks like the hiragana character と, for Tohoku. On route signs, the logo can even work as a miniature course map.
Residents helped choose the route through workshops and field surveys. Those conversations uncovered old everyday paths and cultural places that maps might miss, helping make a trail that locals could recognize as their own and help care for.
The 7-hectare Tanesashi Natural Lawn reaches almost to the Pacific, but its smooth, grassy look has a human history: grazing horses once kept the turf short. Today, local people maintain the open pasture-like landscape.
At the northern gateway, Kabushima, around 30,000 black-tailed gulls are estimated to gather during breeding season. Their colony is a national natural monument, and each nesting pair holds a territory of roughly 1 square metre.
On the Hachinohe section, the trail crosses about 2 km of white sand at Oosuga Beach. Under the right conditions, quartz grains vibrate as they rub, making a soft “squeak”; local residents clean the beach because dirt can silence the sound.
This trail links more than dramatic coastlines: walkers pass through working ports and villages as well as tsunami memorials, preserved disaster sites and massive seawalls. It was created as part of a recovery project, bringing the region’s living communities and disaster memories together along one route.
The 1,000-kilometre-plus trail is not one new footpath cut through wilderness: it links existing nature walks, paved roads, beaches, old routes and even tunnels. It crosses 4 prefectures and fully opened on June 9, 2019.
