Ikata, Ehime

Wind turbines stand along the ridge in a long procession, visible from the road before the sea comes into view. The peninsula of Sadamisaki — a narrow spine of land pushing westward into the water between the Seto Inland Sea and the Uwa Sea — carries this industrial silhouette with a certain matter-of-factness. Ikata-cho occupies the whole length of it, and the drive in along National Route 197 makes the geography legible: the land narrows, the wind picks up, and the horizon opens on both sides at once.

The fishing ports along the coast land *misaki aji* and *misaki saba*, mackerel and horse mackerel whose names carry the cape itself. Mikan groves hold the slopes where the terrain allows. At the Sadamisaki Lighthouse, first lit in 1918 and now a registered tangible cultural property, the path ends at the westernmost point of Shikoku — a quiet terminus, not a dramatic one. Nearby, the Sadamisaki Kameigaike Onsen offers a bath with views over the peninsula's landscape, opened without fanfare in the mid-2000s. The roadside facility Ikata Kirara-kan sits along the national route with a small aquarium and a restaurant, the kind of stop where local catch appears on the lunch menu without ceremony.

The Sadamisaki Hanto Museum, renovated in 2023, gathers folk materials and artworks in one place — a compact record of how people have lived on this exposed, wind-scoured land. The Ariaké fig tree of Misaki, a national natural monument, stands as another kind of document: something rooted, persisting, indifferent to the turbines turning on the ridge above.