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The views from the Goto Islands are simply amazing, but what a position to be placed in, to be forced to describe them. It would require a battalion of poets, parachuted—look! Kobayashi Issa and Wordsworth, coming down together—onto rocky scrubland and gravelly spits—Du Fu tangled in his cords, Gary Snyder approaching with a pen knife to cut him free—to look for an eternity from mountaintops and beaches out across the islands or into the expanse of the East China Sea, dreaming of Chang’an… This, then, can only be a humble invitation to see them for yourselves.
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Some visitors come to Naru Island to commune with the souls of the kakure Christians, the faithful that disappeared from Kyushu when the Tokugawa turned to torture and murder to force them to renounce their faith, and it’s hard not to see the stark beauty through the eyes of those men and women, keeping the flame of their creed burning through the centuries. Not far from this lookout at the Odagora Observatory, the kakure kept the embers glowing, and Catholic churches were built by the missionaries that came back to claim their apostate souls—but one wonders, looking out into Okushi Bay to the north, and further out into the East China Sea, whether the true believers saw a promised land or a wasteland.
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At Takahama Beach on Fukue, a statue of the Gyoran Kannon, a reworking of Kannon into a fisher’s deity, looks out on a stunning vista, hefting her basket of fish, waiting for the boats to return. Located on the western shore of Fukue Island, Takahama Beach is one of the best on the island, and apart from a few weeks in the middle of the high season, the sands are mostly empty. The lookout encourages daydreams of taking a rough canoe out to the smaller islands that orbit Fukue, or perhaps catching a ride with Kukai on his voyage to the Tang Empire.
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- Takahama Beach
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- Nagasaki Goto-shi Miirakumachi Kaitsu 1054-1
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Origami Observatory on the fairly deserted island of Hisaka looks out on the uninhabited islands that dot the deep waters of the Goto archipelago. The island is comparatively rustic, with not much in the way of services, so pack a lunch, take the ferry over from Fukue, and break bread while looking out on one of the most impressive views in the islands.
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- 折紙展望台
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- 長崎県五島市蕨町
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Mount Onidake, “ogre mountain,” is a volcanic dome to the south of Fukue Island’s main center, and a great place to look down on the flattest space in the archipelago, taking in the port traffic and the town below. The climb to its humpback peak is fairly forgiving, which is another plus. Onidake is a famous spot to fly kites, carpeted as it is in scrubby grass, constantly buffeted by breezes whipping in off the straits.
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- 五島列島・鬼岳温泉
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- 長崎県五島市上大津町
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One of the best lookouts in the islands, and certainly the finest on Naru, Shirotake Observatory stands at the highest point on the island, rewarding those that make it up there with a view that extends as far south as the big island of Fukue and as far north as Wakamatsu.
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- 城岳展望台(奈留島)
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- 長崎県五島市奈留町浦
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Looking up the westernmost point in the Japanese archipelago, the result is an Okinawan island, deep in the pacific, but at various points in history, Osezaki Lighthouse on the far western edge of Fukue has held the honor. The trek out to the cliffs at Osezaki is best accomplished with one of the island’s plentiful electric cars, but can also be done on a bus that runs very intermittently out to the cape. Once there, a hike of about an hour will take one up to the best views in the archipelago. From the cliffs, jutting far out into the East China Sea, one can almost hear the bustling markets in the port of Yangzhou, the destination for sailors on the envoy ships for whom this would have been their last glimpse of their homeland, and their first glimpse upon returning.
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