The valley that was built to hide in
When the Heike clan lost everything in 1185, the survivors fled deep into Shikoku's interior and settled where pursuit was least likely: Iya, a set of gorges so steep that houses and fields sit on terraces cut into the slopes. The vine bridges were defensive equipment, strong enough to cross, quick enough to sever if pursuers ever reached the valley.
The world did eventually find it, in the 1970s, via an American writer named Alex Kerr who bought a collapsing thatched farmhouse here for the price of a used car and spent decades making the case that rural Japan's emptying farmhouses were worth restoring. His valley is now the rare place where you can cross a medieval escape route in the morning and sleep in a rescued 300-year-old farmhouse that night.
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