Ganryujima is about 10 minutes by boat from the Shimonoseki mainland. At first I figured the pier must be somewhere closer to the island, but when I asked the information staff at the fish market, they said you can board right out front. Parking would cost a bit more, but I just made a quick trip of it.
The Lovers’ Lighthouse makes another appearance
This time I shot it from the boat.
It’s a port, so the shoreline is packed with heavy machinery.
Pretty much every city along the Pacific-side coast, Onomichi, Hiroshima and so on, has this kind of vibe.
You can see logistics warehouses too.
Ganryujima seen from afar
It’s closer and smaller than I expected.
A boat moored at the pier
The place behind it looks like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Where Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro fought
They supposedly fought on a sandy beach, but the beach disappeared thanks to years of land reclamation work expanding the island. -_- So much for the legend… I was really disappointed. Instead they’ve put up a stone marker so you can take photos with it.
Shimonoseki seen from the island
The historical significance has faded quite a bit, but it’s a decent enough walking course.
Lots of families visiting too…
A lazy weekend afternoon kind of atmosphere.
Statues of Sasaki Kojiro and Miyamoto Musashi
As a boy, Sasaki Kojiro, the super-genius pretty-boy swordsman, went down to the riverside every day and honed his swordsmanship by cutting down swallows in flight with a sword called the “Drying Pole” (Monohoshizao), a hand’s breadth longer than a normal blade. As he grew older his swordsmanship deepened even further, until he broke away from his master’s teachings and founded his own school, called Ganryu. Cutting down swallows, seriously, that’s on the same level as Yang Guo training in the Nine Swords of Dugu. His opponent, Miyamoto Musashi, was a born beast of a character, famous for fighting a 70-against-1 duel with the students of the prestigious Yoshioka dojo in Kyoto. From that experience he realised that two swords are handier when you’re fighting a crowd, and created the two-sword style. Your average swordsman struggles to swing even one sword, and he wielded two at will, so he too was way beyond ordinary human level.
Since Sasaki Kojiro died in the duel on Ganryujima, these days only Miyamoto Musashi is well known, but there’s a strong theory that Kojiro was actually the better swordsman. Either way, the difference was probably paper-thin. Swordsmen of this level fighting a duel with live blades is extremely rare even in history, which is probably why it still attracts so much interest from buffs.
The Kanmon Bridge in the distance.
It links Honshu and Kyushu, but it’s not all that big.
A sandy beach recreating the dueling ground
Sasaki Kojiro arrived first at the agreed spot, the beach on Ganryujima, and waited, and Miyamoto Musashi’s boat reached the dueling ground much later. On the way over to the island Musashi carved an oar into a wooden sword longer than the Drying Pole, and the moment he landed he charged straight at Kojiro, winning with an attack that caught him off guard. What really happened, of course, only the two of them know. Whether the duel was fair or not… none of that means much. Musashi survived, after all, and became famous across the ages.
The dueling ground I’d hoped would transcend history was gone, but I came away with one small, modest hope: even a super-genius pretty boy can’t beat the seasoned craftiness of a middle-aged guy. So I was very satisfied with my trip to Ganryujima.
I walked the rest of the trail too.
The round trip costs 800 yen, so I wanted to get my money’s worth…
Spotted a raccoon dog at the end of the trail!
When was the last time I saw a live tanuki… anyway, it was really cute. It wasn’t fat like the cartoon characters, and it looked a lot more like a dog than I expected.
Eyes pleading for something to eat…
But I had nothing to eat on me at the time… maybe we’ll meet again someday.
Looks like a homeless person’s home…
I couldn’t figure out how they eat. There’s no restaurant or shop on the island.
The docks in the distance…
This kind of ultra-modern industrial scenery is nice too. I wonder if there’s anywhere like this in Korea…
The statues seen from afar
More tourists come here than I expected.
A quiet patch of grass
If you think of it as just a quiet park, Ganryujima isn’t so bad. The dueling ground has simply become a plaza. I doubt I’ll ever come back in my life, though…