Odoriko Trail was added to Your Favorites!
Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Shizuoka
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
The Odoriko Trail follows the journey behind Kawabata’s story: at 19, he traveled through Izu with a troupe of itinerant performers, crossing Amagi toward Yugano. The famous dancer began in real-life encounters, not pure invention.
The Old Amagi Tunnel is 445.5 metres long and built throughout with cut stone. Opened in 1905, it is Japan’s longest surviving stone road tunnel; in 2001, it became the first road tunnel designated an Important Cultural Property.
Stonework beside the trail marks old charcoal kilns. Amagi charcoal reached Edo, and a grave in the trail’s Amagi Yuyu no Mori area remembers Ichibei, credited with bringing charcoal-making know-how from Kishu in the 18th century.
The streamside wasabi beds have deep roots: cultivation at Amagi is documented from 1744, and Izu growers developed tiered “tatami-ishi” stone beds around 1892. This traditional water-wasabi farming is now recognized as agricultural heritage by FAO.
Before the 1905 tunnel opened, travelers crossed Amagi by the higher Nibonsugi Pass. The historic Shimoda Kaido carried U.S. Consul Townsend Harris from Shimoda toward Edo in the final years of the shogunate.
Kawazu’s seven waterfalls form a volcanic staircase: about 25,000 years ago, lava from a volcano on Amagi’s southwest slope filled the river valley. The stream now drops over the lava’s steps, where cooling rock formed striking column-like joints.
At the trail’s Kawazu Nanadaru end, the 7 falls are read “nana-daru,” not “nana-taki.” “Daru” preserves the old folk word “tarumi,” meaning falling water—a centuries-old local way of naming a waterfall.
Sotarō Cedar Avenue is a planted forest, not ancient wild woodland: the cedars were planted in 1877. Its name remembers Sotarō, the person who developed the area, and the grove is preserved as an academic-reference forest.
At the trail’s Yugano end, Fukudaya ryokan was one of Kawabata’s regular lodgings, and he wrote “The Dancing Girl of Izu” there. Across the river is the communal bath associated with one of the story’s best-known scenes.
