Amanohashidate

Amanohashidate stretches across the mouth of the Aso Sea, a lagoon at the western end of Miyazu Bay on the Tango coast of northern Kyoto Prefecture. The sandbar is only 20 to 170 metres wide but about 3.6 kilometres long, lined with black and red pines and crossed by a path, so that walkers and cyclists can cross the bay along it.

Since the Edo period it has been counted among the Three Views of Japan (Nihon Sankei), together with Matsushima and Miyajima. It is traditionally viewed from the hills at either end: from Kasamatsu Park in the north, visitors bend over and look back between their legs (mata-nozoki), so that the sandbar seems to float in the sky like a bridge to heaven.

Around the sandbar stand important religious sites: Chion-ji with its Monju Bodhisattva at the southern end, and Kono Shrine and the mountain temple Nariai-ji to the north.

The sandbar was built by sediment carried by currents along the coast of Miyazu Bay and by rivers draining the surrounding hills, gradually closing off the lagoon of the Aso Sea. Since the mid-20th century the supply of sand has declined, and erosion has been countered with a series of small groynes that trap drifting sand. Several freshwater springs rise on the sandbar despite the sea on both sides, including the Isoshimizu well.

About 8,000 pines grow on the sandbar, mostly Japanese black pine. Pine wilt disease and the enrichment of the sandy soil by fallen leaves threaten them, and volunteers clear leaves and plant seedlings. The calm Aso Sea behind the sandbar is a nursery for fish and has long been used for oyster and fish farming.

In the Tango Fudoki, Amanohashidate is the ladder by which the god Izanagi travelled between heaven and earth, which fell and became the sandbar while he slept. The Muromachi-period ink painting 'View of Amanohashidate' by Sesshū, a National Treasure, is one of the great works of Japanese landscape art.