Miyagi

Matsushima

Two hundred and sixty pine-topped islands in a shallow bay, forty minutes from Sendai, and three red bridges that do most of the work. A half-day that most itineraries skip.

A long red bridge curving across still water towards a pine-covered island — Matsushima, Miyagi · September 2023

Matsushima bay holds about two hundred and sixty islands, most of them small enough to carry four or five pines and nothing else. The arrangement has been counted as one of Japan's three classic views since the seventeenth century, and it is one of the few such designations that still makes sense when you stand there.

It is forty minutes from Sendai on a local train, which makes it the easiest half-day in Tohoku and the one most Tokyo-to-Kyoto itineraries never reach.

At a glance

Getting there: JR Senseki line from Sendai, about 40 minutes to Matsushima-kaigan
Cost: The bay is free. The cruises, the temple and the island bridges charge separately
Time needed: Half a day. A full day if you take a cruise and eat properly
Best light: Early morning, when the bay is flat and the islands separate
Local speciality: Oysters, landed here, at their best from November to February

The bridges are the photograph

A long vermilion bridge crossing calm water to a wooded island — October. The bridge to Fukuura island is 252 metres long and painted the red that every shrine gate in the country uses.Matsushima, Miyagi · September 2023

Three bridges connect islands to the shore, each a different length and each charging a small toll. They give you what the bay otherwise refuses: a strong line leading into a soft, repetitive landscape.

Pine-covered islands in still water seen past a red railing — The pines are shaped by salt wind rather than by gardeners, which is the part photographs rarely convey.Matsushima, Miyagi · September 2023

Go early, and look from above

A red bridge curving across the bay with pine islands beyond — Before nine, with the water still. By midday the tour boats have stirred the surface and the light is flat.Matsushima, Miyagi · September 2023

The bay reads best in two conditions: flat calm, when the islands double in the water, and low light, when they separate into layers. Both mean early. There are four designated viewpoints on the hills around the town, and the one north of the station is reachable on foot in twenty minutes.

The rest of the half-day

The cruises take about fifty minutes and loop the inner bay; they are worth it for the scale of the thing, less so for photographs, because the boats are high and fast. The temple complex above the town — a Zen monastery founded in the ninth century and rebuilt in 1609 — has cedar-lined caves cut into the cliff behind it and is the better use of an hour.

Then oysters. The bay farms them, the season runs from late autumn to February, and the grilled ones on the main street are the reason to time a visit for winter rather than summer.