Aki

Shikoku, Japan · Town / small city, Countryside / satoyama

Iwasaki Yataro came from here — the son of a farming family with a samurai past who ended up founding Mitsubishi — and his thatched house still stands, with the stone garden where, they say, he laid out the Japanese archipelago as a boy. Around it there is a quarter of samurai houses fenced with bamboo hedges that are re-tied every seven or eight years, a tower clock a Meiji-era landowner built himself after taking an American one apart, Japan’s first public calligraphy museum, and a tunnel a stream cut through an uplifted marine terrace, carpeted in ferns, a natural monument since 1926. All an hour from Kochi on an elevated railway with the Pacific out of the window.

The essentials

Getting there

Train — Aki is one of the few places on this coast the train reaches, and that changes everything compared with Muroto: from Kochi station it is about seventy minutes on Tosa Kuroshio’s Gomen-Nahari line, which is not JR even though it starts from the same place. From Kochi airport there is a convenient and little-known combination: a shared taxi drops you at Ichi station in about ten minutes — book it in advance, even travelling alone — and from there it is twenty-three minutes on the rapid or thirty-one on the local. By car, fifty minutes from the Nankoku interchange or about sixty from Kochi station. And inside Aki you do not need a car, which is rare in this part of Japan: the old quarter, the field clock, the two museums and the Iwasaki house all sit within a couple of kilometres, and the station lends bicycles for free. The Iokido cave is two stops east and seven minutes’ walk from its own station. The only thing that wants a car or a taxi is Uchiharano park, about twelve minutes out.

Frequently asked questions about Aki

What to do in Aki: 17 activities

• The house where the founder of Mitsubishi was born 1 h must-see

  A single-storey thatched farmhouse that Iwasaki Yataro’s great-grandfather put up around 1795, and where he was born in 1835. The family had been retainers and had come down to working the land; out of this house came the man who founded Mitsubishi. Two things make it worth the detour. The storehouses behind carry ridge tiles with the family crest of three stacked diamonds, the sangai-bishi, which is said — said, the city does not document it — to be the origin of the three-diamond logo. And in the garden there are stones laid out in the shape of the Japanese archipelago, which tradition puts down to Yataro himself as a boy. Admission is free, 9:00 to 16:30, closed Mondays and over New Year; the inside of the house is not open, but the grounds can be seen from 8:00 to 17:00.

• Doi Kachuchu, the samurai quarter 1.5 h must-see

  Nine hectares and a bit of samurai quarter that the state designated an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings on 9 July 2012, in the samurai-town category. What has survived is less the houses — they run from late Edo to the prewar years — than the plan: the division of the plots and the line of the lanes are still the old ones. And the fences, which are what actually stops you: living hedges of bamboo and ubamegashi oak held with battens that have to be re-tied every seven or eight years, alternating with rammed-earth walls. The quarter grew around the castle when the Goto family, chief retainers of the Tosa domain, built their residence here.

• Iokido, the fern tunnel 1.5 h must-see

  A small stream cut its way through an uplifted marine terrace — the same geology that makes Muroto famous, forty kilometres on — until it opened a tunnel, and on the far side it leaves a little valley closed in by cliffs. The walls are lined with warm-climate ferns, including a pure colony of hobishida, and that community has been a national natural monument since 20 October 1926. You walk in along the stream bed, so the water comes up over your feet: the tourist office lends boots free, and Ioki station has a locker for ¥100 that you get back. There is a live camera at the mouth so you can see how the water is running, because rain raises it and then you do not go in, boots or no boots. It is seven minutes’ walk from Ioki station.

• The field clock 0.5 h must-see

  A white clock tower in the middle of the rice fields, and the thing Aki puts on its postcards. Hatanaka Genma, a landowner from one of the old houses in town, built it in the middle of the Meiji era, and the point is how: he had never studied clockmaking, so he took the American octagonal wall clock the family kept in the kitchen, stripped it down and reassembled it as many times as it took to understand it, and then made the gears and weights by hand. It is called the field clock because labourers with no watch read the hour from where they were working. It still keeps time. And it is still somebody’s house: you look from the road and do not go in.

• Japan’s first public calligraphy museum 1 h

  It opened in 1982 as the first publicly run museum in the country devoted to calligraphy alone, which for a town this size is a striking decision. It holds some 1,600 works and shows around a hundred in the permanent display: kanji, kana, the two mixed, and seal carving, with the local calligraphers to the fore — the Kawatani brothers and Teshima Ukei — and its own national open competition each year. Admission is ¥300 for adults, ¥100 for junior and senior high, ¥50 for primary, and on Saturdays school-age visitors go free. Open 9:00 to 17:00, last entry 16:30, closed Mondays unless a public holiday and from 29 December to 3 January; it may shut for a few days between exhibitions.

• The Gomen-Nahari line 1.5 h

  It opened on 1 July 2002, thirty-seven years after work on it started, and runs almost entirely on viaduct, which for a passenger means travelling above the roofs and the rice fields with the Pacific off to one side. There are twenty-one stations between Gomen and Nahari, and each has its own character drawn by Yanase Takashi, the creator of Anpanman, who was from Kochi: the stationmaster at Gomen, the flight attendant at Tateda, the eel at Yoshikawa. After his death the studio carried on making them, like the nurse at the Aki hospital station, which dates from 2021.

• The Hanshin Tigers autumn camp 3 h only three weeks in November

  Aki is the Hanshin Tigers’ second home and has been for decades: in November the team lands at the municipal stadium to train and the town fills with striped shirts. You can watch from the main stand, with sessions starting around ten, though the day’s plan is posted on site. The 2026 edition runs 1 to 18 November, with rest days on the 5th, 9th and 13th. The detail that makes it easy: the Gomen-Nahari line has a station called Kyujomae, "in front of the ground", and it means it. A warning against coming in the wrong month: the spring camp was taken away from Aki and only the autumn one is left, to the point that residents are collecting signatures to get it back.

• The kamaage chirimen-don 1 h

  Just-boiled chirimen whitebait, piled on hot rice. It is the dish Aki has decided should stand for it, run by a group based at the chamber of commerce that keeps the list of who serves it: twelve places around town at the moment, from the canteen at the fishing port to the café in the town hall. There is no official recipe and no requirements, so each one builds it its own way, with soup, with grilled aubergine or with vegetable tempura alongside.

• Aki castle, which is no longer there 0.75 h

  Of the castle Aki Kunitora held here in the warring-states period there remain the site, the moats and the trees, and on top of them came first the Goto residence and later, in the twentieth century, the town’s two museums. It is worth understanding as the hub everything else hangs from: the samurai quarter was laid out around this enclosure, which is why the street plan makes sense seen from here and not from the main road.

• Pottery and glass at Uchiharano 2 h booking

  Uchiharano-yaki has been made here for over two hundred years, and the town workshop lets you get your hands in it. Four different things: hand-building, ¥3,000 and booking required; painting a ready-made piece, ¥1,200; lampworking glass rod into tombodama beads, ¥3,000 and also by booking; and sandblasting a design, ¥1,500. Worth knowing that the wheel is not on offer and that the glass is torch work, not blowing. Open 9:00 to 17:00, closed Wednesdays, plus Thursdays for the glass side, and over New Year.

• The azalea festival 2 h only from late March to late April

  Uchiharano park holds some fifteen thousand azaleas, and from late March to late April the festival is built around them, mostly on Sundays: there is matcha served and you can take a boat out on the pond, which does not run the rest of the year. It is a village festival rather than an event: the flowers are what you come for and the rest keeps them company.

• The free bicycles at the station 0.5 h

  Aki is a town for a bicycle and the town has dealt with it: the market at the station lends eleven adult bikes and three children’s, free of charge, 7:00 to 18:00 from April to September and until 17:00 from October to March. None on wet days. The information centre has five more, also free, but those have to be booked. With one of them the field clock is ten minutes away and the museum fifteen, both of which are a long walk.

• The history museum, inside the castle 1 h

  It stands on the castle site and tells Aki in layers: the objects and documents of the Goto family, chief retainers of the Tosa domain; the archaeology and farm tools of the district; and a room for the locals who got somewhere, with Iwasaki Yataro and the children’s-song composer Hirota Ryutaro. It puts on two or three temporary shows a year. Admission is ¥300, open 9:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:30, closed Mondays and from 29 December to 3 January. It shares the grounds with the calligraphy museum and there is a combined ticket.

• The information centre, which is half an Iwasaki museum 0.75 h

  It is called Yataro Kokorozashi Shachu and it is both the tourist office and a room about the town’s famous son: a big curved screen runs his life as animation. It opened in 2011 and was rebuilt completely in 2020. It is free, open 8:30 to 17:30 every day of the year, and five minutes’ walk from the station. Guides for the Iokido cave are booked here, and there are five bicycles lent free, by prior reservation and not on wet days; for a group or for children the market at the station has more.

• The market at the station 0.75 h

  Attached to the station and open 7:00 to 19:00 every day of the year, which for a producers’ market is an unusual and very useful set of hours. There is local fruit and veg, fish from that morning, Aki’s own chirimen whitebait, imokenpi sweet-potato sticks, yuzu and ponzu sauces, local sake, Uchiharano pottery and the railway’s own merchandise. It has its own bakery too. It is also where the free bicycles are picked up, so almost everyone ends up inside.

• The open-deck carriages 1.5 h

  Two of the line’s carriages carry an open-air deck on the seaward side, and the trains that pull them have names: Yataro when they start or finish at Aki and Shintaro when they do at Nahari, after Iwasaki Yataro and Nakaoka Shintaro, who came from the village next to Nahari. There is no supplement and no reservation: you pay the ordinary fare and seating is unreserved. They run daily, though sometimes the carriage is in for maintenance and the train goes out as an ordinary one, and the deck is not open for the whole route. It is windy out there, so hold on to your hat.

• Uchiharano park 1 h

  A garden of feudal origin around Benten pond, with the Goto family’s old Enjutei villa inside it. Entry is free and at any hour, all year; the car park holds a hundred cars and costs ¥300. It is a quiet hour with nothing you have to understand, and it pairs with the pottery workshop next door. It is about twelve minutes by car from Aki station, the one thing in town you cannot do on foot or by bicycle.

What only happens on specific dates

• The azalea festival from late March to late April
• The Hanshin Tigers autumn camp three weeks in November

Chains well with

More destinations in Shikoku