Uchiko and Ōzu: wax, river fog, and a castle rebuilt in wood

Shikoku has no shinkansen, and the Ehime towns of Uchiko and Ōzu have never needed one. A limited express from Matsuyama reaches Uchiko in under half an hour and Ōzu about ten minutes later. That is close enough for two slow days of wax, wood and river fog.

Day one: Uchiko and the wax that paid for it

Uchiko (内子) grew rich in the late 1800s on mokurō (木蝋), a wax pressed from the berries of the haze tree and exported as far as Europe. The money still shows along Yōkaichi-Gokoku, a street of cream-plastered merchant houses, where the Kamihaga residence keeps its old wax workshops open to visitors. A few doors away, the Ōmori candle shop still makes each candle by hand, building it up one layer at a time.

Walk back by way of Uchiko-za (内子座), a wooden kabuki theatre that opened in 1916 and was restored in 1985. On days without a performance you can sit in the tatami boxes and go down beneath the revolving stage.

Day two: Ōzu, a castle and a villa above the river

Ōzu (大洲) sits in a bend of the Hiji River. Its castle keep was rebuilt in wood rather than concrete in 2004, working from Meiji-era photographs and an old wooden model, and the joinery is visible from inside. A short walk downstream is Garyū Sansō (臥龍山荘), a merchant's villa finished in the early 1900s. Its tea hut, Furōan, juts out from the rock so that the river runs almost beneath its floor.

An early start for the river fog

From about October to March, on clear and cold mornings, cold air that has pooled in the Ōzu basin pours down the river toward the sea and carries fog with it. Locals call it Hijikawa arashi (肱川あらし). Take a local train to Nagahama at the river mouth, where the fog streams under a red bascule bridge built in 1935, and be there before 8 a.m.

肱川あらしは、晴れて冷え込んだ朝にしか現れない。

Stay the night in Ōzu rather than Matsuyama so the fog is a short ride away. If the morning turns out grey and still, the castle opens at nine.