Sado Island

“The people in our town, they died without ever seeing the ocean.”

Strange words to hear on an island. They are spoken by an 80-year-old woman we have met at a bus stop just after arriving at the port of Akadomari on Sado Island. She has the signature stoop of many elderly rice farmers, her torso leaning from her waist at a ninety-degree angle even when she stands. But she seems vigorous for her age and it’s clear her mind is sharp.

The town she speaks of is Hamochi, tucked away in the mountains, less than a day’s hike to the coast.

“My ancestors labored in the fields there for many generations,” she explains. “We didn’t have cars and at the end of a hard day, we never had any reason to walk to the sea.”

I struggle to fathom how a person, let alone a whole community, could live surrounded by water and never set eyes on it. Sado—located on the Sea of Japan off the northern coast of Niigata—is, admittedly, a vast island. Covering some 855 square kilometers, it is the sixth largest island in Japan, following Okinawa.

As we board the bus, the woman tells us to keep our eyes out for crested ibis, perching in the trees around her town. This distinctive bird—with its white crest, red feet and face, and long narrow beak—was at one time thought extinct, until the last seven in the world were found in China’s Shaanxi province. Several dozen have since been reintroduced to Japan— Sado in particular—and with strict regulations on pesticides and chemical fertilizers, they are now in their second-generation.

Though, we don’t spot any crested ibises, the ride is a fine introduction to Sado’s coastal scenery. Lush trees spill down the mountains to our right, with the ocean stretching out endlessly on the left, as we pass through town after town of clay-shingled wooden houses, not a Western-style building anywhere.

After saying farewell to the woman as she gets off, we arrive at a beach called Sobama where we pitch our tents and spend the rest of the day snorkeling.

Next morning, we catch the bus for Sado’s ancient gold and silver mine — Kinzan. On the way, I spot a crested ibis in a tree and call excitedly to my companions, but by the time they look our bus has pulled us away. The glimpse was brief, and no one else was able to confirm it, so I soon begin to doubt my eyes. There is something almost unreal about sighting such a rare creature brought back from the brink.

Soon we arrive at Kinzan, a forested mountain near the west coast. Mining began here in 1601, providing gold for the coins, many minted on Sado itself, that financed the Tokugawa Shogunate (along with rice, another currency in those days). The mine remained active until 1989, when mineral veins finally ran out. Its two shafts have since been converted into a museum that exhibits traditional mining practices in-situ.

The first shaft—Sodayu Tunnel—is a relic of Japan’s pre-industrial Edo Period. We descend a stairwell through a dark passage into the belly of the mountain, where the temperature drops some 10 degrees. Conditions from when the mine was worked, often by women and children, have been preserved, with wooden beams propping up the walls and ceiling to stop cave-ins. In the lantern-lit gloom, placards present historical facts, and humanoid robots reenact the grueling labor: hewing tunnels through solid rock with hammers and chisels; pumping in air to prevent suffocation; and draining the steady accumulation of spring water on alternating 24-hour shifts.