712 - Japan was created by the copulation of the first two deities, Izanagi (the male) and Izanami (the female). According to the ''Kojiki'' (Record of Ancient Matters) - the most sacred book of the Shinto religion, compiled in A.D. Nowadays travelers are much more likely to arrive by air in Tokyo or Osaka, and if they decide to visit the Inland Sea, they will start at the eastern, or Awaji, end rather than the Shimonoseki end.Īwaji, the largest of the more than 3,000 islands in this sea, is an appropriate place to begin. Their ships would pass through the Strait of Shimonoseki, where Honshu and Kyushu come close together, then make their way across the sea to Kobe or some other port. In the past, travelers from China or elsewhere in Asia usually reached Japan by way of the Inland Sea. The extraordinary postwar growth of the Japanese economy can be surmised from the huge industrial complexes along the coast, notably the immense automobile works outside Hiroshima where Mazda cars are manufactured. More recently, it was on an Inland Sea city, Hiroshima, that the first atomic bomb was dropped. In historical times the area around the Inland Sea was the scene of all three great battles of the civil war of the 12th century between the Heike and Genji clans, a bitter struggle that involved the whole country and ended with the total destruction of the once-omnipotent Heike.

One can get accustomed to anything, even to the Inland Sea.Īccording to Japanese mythology, the islands of the Inland Sea are the oldest part of the country. The scene changes constantly, each turn on the way revealing another surprising cluster of islands and ships but when I recently crossed on a large, luxurious motorboat, whose wall-to-wall carpeting extended over the ceiling and even around the television set, most of the other passengers were busily reading the sports pages. The view is so entrancing that it's easy to forget that this is not simply a magnificent tourist attraction, but a much-used waterway dotted with entirely businesslike ships of many sizes and nationalities. The Inland Sea is usually calm, more like a lake than a sea, because it is all but encircled by the main islands - Honshu to the north, and Shikoku and Kyushu to the south and west. If you are lucky with the weather, the brilliant green of the islands is set off by the sparkling blue of the sea and the softer blue of the sky, but even if it is raining, the varied shapes of the islands, dimly visible through the mist, claim your entire attention. From the deck of the ferry or speedboat, patterns of islands change kaleidoscopically, now linking together to form a single serrated island, now standing apart as if to allow fishing boats and tankers to pass. No region of Japan gives more immediate pleasure than the Inland Sea.

The great naruto bridge