Japan's Caves & Underground Wonders

About this book

Japan is steep, wet and volcanic on the surface — and hollow underneath. This is its underground book.

Japan's Caves & Underground Wonders covers 200 caves and underground places in one traveller's format: the cave itself, its history with the people who worshipped, mined and sheltered in it, how to visit, and the specific safety note that belongs to that place. The blue underground lakes of Ryusendo and the great halls of Akiyoshido. Fuji's ice and wind caves, still holding winter in midsummer. The cathedral-sized Oya quarry caverns and the silver levels of Ikuno and Iwami Ginzan. A shrine standing inside a sea cave at Udo, pottery fused into Ryugado's stone for three thousand years, and Okinawa's wartime tunnels, written as the places of remembrance their communities keep them as.

It is honest where the underground demands it. A cave floods from rain that fell out of sight, so safety is not a disclaimer in this book — it is part of the format, in all 200 entries: each closes with its own specific cautions and the same instruction to check opening, water levels, flood information and closures in official sources, and the practical chapters teach you how to read floodwater, darkness and cold before you ever step underground. Places you may only look at say so. Caves that are objects of worship, and tunnels that are graves and memorials, are treated as such.

Come and read the country from underneath.