Follow route of samurai Ryoma Sakamoto’s historic escape with trek across Shikoku Island

Sakamoto Ryoma fled from his Japanese feudal master, at the risk of execution. Now you can follow his route – but under less pressure – with Walk Japan

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Chikurin-Ji temple, daishi-do and pagoda at Chikurinji, Japan. Photo: Handout

Peter Neville-Hadley

Published: 10:00am, 21 Jul 2024Updated: 2:53pm, 22 Jul 2024

In the town of Kochi on the south coast of Shikoku Island, our small group of walkers gathers beneath a row of eight-metre-high statues that portray significant samurai of the Bakumatsu period – the years leading up to the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the return of imperial power in 1868.

A row of eight-metre-high statues of samurai of the Bakumatsu period; Sakamoto Ryoma is in the centre. Picture: Peter Neville-Hadley

The three figures in long gowns, their swords in hand or thrust through belts, are dramatically up-lit against the deepening blue of the evening sky. The key figure is Ryoma Sakamoto, shown with a sullen air and downturned mouth, peering into the distance with narrowed eyes. He is accompanied by a fellow rebel and by the man who taught both of them politics and swordsmanship.

We’re ready to set out on a new on-foot offering from Hong Kong-based cultural trek specialist Walk Japan that crosses the island through mountainous areas rarely reached by foreigners.

Japan is laced with ancient long-distance paths that remain largely unknown to outsiders, and the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage, which follows the coastline, probably has the highest profile overseas. But our Kochi and Ehime Discovery tour will instead cross the island’s central mountains and be more about the temporal than the spiritual.

We’ll follow paths from the coast to the interior along which salt was traded and cross passes taken by Sakamoto, who famously fled from his feudal overlord – a crime punishable by death.

A green tea plantation in Yanagino, along the mini-Henro trail on day three of Walk Japan’s Kochi to Ehime tour in Japan. Photo: Handout

The samurai Sakamoto was born in Kochi, but his importance lies in his escape from it and his campaign for the restoration of imperial rule. He was immortalised in a multi-volume biographical novel by the late Ryotaro Shiba, Ryoma! The Life of Sakamoto Ryoma: Japanese Swordsman and Visionary (1963), which was enormously popular in Japan.