Spot guide · Sakaiminato 境港
Photo: At by At / CC BY-SA 3.0Around 177 bronze yokai line 800 metres of street, and they are here because Mizuki Shigeru grew up in this town, survived Rabaul, lost his drawing arm, learned to draw with the other one, and spent sixty years cataloguing Japan's folk monsters before the people who remembered them died.
The road opened in 1993 with 23 statues as a survival strategy for a declining fishing town. It worked completely. The manhole covers, streetlights, bank signage, taxis and shop shutters are all committed, and there is a yokai train.
One shuttle ride from the ship, and the street plus the market fills the window.
An hour inside, and the war half is the part people skip.
Road and museum in the morning, Matsue or Adachi after.
A ride, not a walk. Smaller ships berth at Showa Wharf, about 30 minutes on foot from the station where the road begins — most calls run a shuttle. The largest ships use Sakai Yumeminato Terminal 6km south, with a shuttle (paid on some lines) or a ~15-minute taxi. The road itself is the easy part: 800 metres from the station to the museum, flat the whole way, lined with 177 bronze yokai.
Yes, and for a reason most visitors miss: alongside the yokai it covers his war experience at Rabaul, where he survived malaria and an air raid that killed his unit and lost his left drawing arm. His war comics are among the most respected in Japan.
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