“Well, we found a gate, but there sure aren’t any houses. How could a hotel possibly stay in business at the end of a road like this?” I muttered, staring bleakly at the crushed shipping container that lay beyond a battered gate, where our destination should’ve been.

  “Maybe people come in by boat?” Miyoshi theorized. “They’ve got boat tours and whatnot, where people can check out the caves and interesting rock formations along the seaside.”

  “Huh. I guess that might explain why the roads aren’t being maintained.”

  The route we came in on would probably make the infamous list of the worst roads in Japan. No doubt it would’ve cost a fortune to fix it up all the way back to Obama, and no private company in their right mind would’ve been willing to fund it. Given that fact, it made perfect sense to secure a sea route instead. The place was “cut off from the world” in a fairly literal sense, after all. It was the same concept as staying at a hotel on a remote island, and they could’ve even made that their selling point. Places that were way off the beaten path could hold a special charm for some people—though once they finally made the trip, many of those people ended up regretting it.

  At least, that had been my experience when I visited a remote island back in my college days. Common sense had dictated that I could look forward to indulging myself with seafood all day long in such a location, but what I’d ended up getting were things like sautéed fish sausage, fried spam, and stir-fried bean sprouts. In hindsight, it made sense—it had been a simple inn on an island with no distribution system in place. The surrounding ocean no doubt held plenty of raw ingredients, but there’d been nobody to catch or sell them. Sure, dedicated fishermen might’ve been able to handle that, but the elderly men and women of the island sure hadn’t been up to the task.

  “Or maybe they want to preserve that nice, rustic feeling of an unmaintained road,” I suggested.

  “Supposedly there’s a port a bit further down that’s actually quite well maintained,” Saito said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  According to her, the port in question used to be a flourishing center of international trade.

  “Well, Tsuruga was a thriving port of trade for a long time as well, from the days of the envoys from Balhae until the railroad system was built.” It wasn’t all that far-fetched to think there would be a port nearby that was still reaping the benefits from those days.

  “What is that?” Miyoshi asked suddenly, sounding rather surprised.

  When I took my focus away from the road and looked up, my eyes went wide. There, enclosed by the trees that had grown across the road into an arch and were blocking out the sunlight above, was an amazing sight.

  “Maybe this is the aforementioned gate?”

  The gate, which looked just large enough for two cars to pass by each other, was made of a sturdy bronze or iron, and at its top was some kind of crest in the shape of a circle with a cross inside it.

  “What gate are you talking about?” Miyoshi asked.

  “Oh, the guy I asked for directions earlier said we would get to a gate eventually.”

  Stopping the car, I got out and looked up at the gate.

  “The gateposts look like they’ve been around a while, but the gate itself doesn’t look all that old, if you ask me.” The two components definitely looked like they were from different eras, if nothing else.

  Miyoshi furrowed her brow in thought.

  “Is it beyond here? If so, how exactly are we supposed to get through the closed ga—”

  Before she could finish speaking, the gate suddenly let out a tiny creak and opened inward ever so slightly.

  “Whoa! It’s like a horror movie! This place would make an awesome filming location!” Saito’s happy-go-lucky voice rang out from behind us as we stood there in front of the gate, frozen by the bizarre atmosphere.

  “Kei, I just got flashbacks of a certain Manor.”

  “Well, what do you know? So did I.” Though there’s absolutely no possible way it could show up here.

  One of the gateposts had some weathered characters carved into it that read “Sukusu-guchi.” Apparently it was the entrance to Sukusu after all. That means we’ve been on the right road all along. But why would anyone build a gate right over the main road?

  “Do you think everything beyond the gate is private property?” Miyoshi wondered.

  “Maybe. But you know, this kind of reminds me of an ancient European ghetto,” I murmured, noticing the locking bars on both the inside and outside of the gate.

  Ghettos were emblematic of the religious persecution of Jewish people in Europe during the late medieval period into the early modern era. Jews within the ghettos built walls from the inside to protect themselves from persecution, while the other inhabitants of the city built walls from the outside to prevent those inside from coming out on important holy days.

  “So what do you think is inside?” Miyoshi asked.

  “I’m guessing it’s a place where the influence of the deities of the Wakasahiko and Wakasahime shrines back there can no longer reach us.”

  “Ooh! The mercury’s rising on the Hieda-meter!”

  “Could you not?” I groaned, but stopped there. It was approaching the hottest part of a midsummer day, yet the canopy of trees above was keeping the area around us oddly cool, and due to that, it felt absurdly humid.

  “That symbol is the emblem of the Shimazu clan, isn’t it?” Mitsurugi said, tilting her head as she stared up at the gate. “What’s it doing all the way out here?”

  Saito gasped.

  “Oh my god, Haru, when did you become a historian?”

  “Oh, Ryoko, don’t be silly. You realize this emblem is really famous, right?”

  “Hey Kei! The Cross of Shimazu is a seal that destroys evil!”

  “What, you mean like making the sign of the cross on your chest?” The act of doing that was believed by some to ward off disaster and bring good fortune.

  “Well, there are theories that say it’s related to the Christian cross, at least.”

  “I seriously doubt that... The Cross of Shimazu has been in use since way before Christianity was introduced here,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe it’s one of history’s mysteries!” Miyoshi shot back.

  “Yeah, super mysterious. Anyway, as long as this isn’t a private road, we may as well head on in. Could you open the gate while I bring the car through?”

  “You got it!”

  After passing through the gate, we traveled down the snaking road for a while until the gloom of the forest vanished suddenly, as if something had sliced away all the trees, and we entered an open area illuminated by the bright summer sun.

  “Wow! It’s almost like one of those little villages built on the cliffs of the Mediterranean coast!”

  In the distance was a village that had been built on a small plateau in the back of a cove. The bright white sandy beach on the opposite side of the cove almost looked like it was made out of coral, giving the ocean an emerald green hue.

  “Are there actually any coral reefs in this area?” Mitsurugi said in disbelief, gawking at the color of the sand.

  I rubbed my chin in thought before responding.

  “I think coral reefs in Japan only go about as far north as Tateyama in Chiba on the Pacific side. On the Sea of Japan side, hmm... I believe Tsushima Island was the limit, maybe?”

  Saito suddenly poked her head out the window.

  “So...does that mean the owner of the hotel above the beach brought all that white sand in from somewhere else?” she asked innocently.

  “Nobody in their wildest dreams could hope to do that,” Mitsurugi replied, shaking her head.

  “Well, if it’s natural”—I pointed to the rocky area at the bottom of the hill on which the building stood—“it could just be unusually white granite sand.”

  “A quartz beach, then?”

  “Probably.”

  The quartz sand at Shirarahama Beach in the Wakayama prefecture was extremely white, making the ocean look rather green, but the waters we were looking at seemed even greener still.

  The town wasn’t built out of stone like ones you’d see in Italy or southern France, but the rows of quaint country houses lined up across the back of the cove, with their mix of Japanese and Western styles, were quite beautiful from a distance. And then there was the building on the other side of the cove, perched atop a small hill that seemed to jut right out into the water.

  “So is that the place we’re looking for?” I asked.

  “You know, it totally could be,” Saito replied.

  “It’s bigger than I thought it’d be. And it’s a Western-style building too! Way out here in the boondocks!” Miyoshi exclaimed.

  “She did say it had just been built, didn’t she...?”

  Saito shook her head.

  “Nope! My friend said they renovated an existing building.”

  “If this area prospered through trade, then maybe some rich person from the West built it back then?” I suggested.

  “Though we didn’t start building anything in the Western style until the Bakumatsu,” Miyoshi pointed out. “I wonder when and how the place was built...?”

  The source of the bricks was certainly something I was curious about—Japan’s first brick factory wasn’t even built until the Meiji era.

  The road circled around the perimeter of the town, then headed up the hill. We didn’t see a single person on the way there—maybe they were all out at work. The only sign of actual life in the town was the occasional drying laundry we saw outside, fluttering in the wind.

  My phone had lost signal shortly after we passed the Tomari Disposal Facility, but as we got closer to the hotel, I started picking up reception from a different network. Apparently the place was equipped with Wi-Fi, if nothing else.

  Once we had made it to the top of the hill and through the hotel gate, I parked next to the entrance, and a man came out immediately. He looked like—well, I wouldn’t quite say a bellboy or doorman, but perhaps the word “butler” was an appropriate fit.

  “Welcome, Miss Saito.”

  “Hi there! We appreciate your hospitality!”

  Two bellboys soon came out from somewhere behind the man, pulled our luggage out from the trunk of our car, then led Saito and Mitsurugi to their rooms.

  “This building looks like it could have a lot of history behind it,” Miyoshi remarked.

  Looking at it from up close, I saw that it wasn’t made from brick at all, but a combination of wood and stone.

  “According to the records, it was built by a Western woman who drifted ashore here in the sixth year of the Keicho period.”

  “Any idea when exactly that was?”

  “The Battle of Sekigahara was in the year 1600, which was the fifth year of Keicho, so the sixth year would’ve been 1601,” Miyoshi added informatively.

  “So a year after Sekigahara, then?”

  “March of 1601 was when the Dutch ships first showed up in Japan after setting sail two years prior. I imagine the Holy Roman Empire was sending ships all over the place around that time.”

  “Like the Liefde?”

  “A whole bunch of Portuguese ships came here from Macau in the late 1500s too.”

  “I’ve never heard about any ships drifting ashore in this area though.” If the Dutch ship Liefde had gone down in the annals of Japanese history, it would seem like any ship that landed here would’ve as well. In fact, it would have been awfully strange if it hadn’t.

  “Well, apparently the woman drifted ashore at Kuotogahama on some kind of small container-like vessel.”

  “Kuotogahama?”

  “That’s the name of the white beach at the bottom of the cliff. It was just some nameless beach before that, and the woman gave it a name sometime after she arrived. Now it’s a private beach for the guests staying at this hotel.”

  “Wait, a small container-like vessel...? You mean like an utsubo-bune?”

  “The Hieda-meter just went up another notch, Kei!”

  “Oh, come on. Utsubo-bune tales are folk legends, through and through. Besides, those all happened in the 1800s.”

  “Did they?” Miyoshi brought up a quick search on her phone, then showed me the results. “I didn’t do a deep dive, but it looks like the earliest records are from the Genroku period.”

  “When was Genroku again?”

  “Around 1700, roughly.”

  “Huh. So you’re saying this could be the oldest utsubo-bune on record in Japan?”

  The man, who had been listening to us, flashed a mysterious smile and shook his head.

  “I wouldn’t call them official records, unfortunately, but we do have some personal documents.”

  “Personal documents...? Whose?”

  “The shrine priest who took said woman into his care.”

  “Really?!”

  Apparently there was a small, ancient shrine in the forest nearby that wasn’t even registered with the Association of Shinto Shrines.

  The headquarters of the Association of Shinto Shrines was a slightly questionable-looking black building hidden among the trees of the Meiji Shrine grounds. It was nestled up against the Yamanote Line at the Kita-sando entrance, and it also happened to be right next to our office. With its security cameras out in plain sight, from afar it kind of looked like a hideout for some secret society, but in actuality it was a highly respected religious organization overseeing Shinto shrines across the nation.

  Of course, there were a fair number of shrines that were not a part of the Association. Many shrines had withdrawn from the organization in recent years, including the Nikko Tosho-gu in 1985, and the Tomioka Hachiman, which recently had gotten embroiled in a murder case.

  There was a huge stir in 2005 when the Meiji Shrine itself left the Association of Shinto Shrines. It rejoined again after a few years, but the intervening time introduced a rather comical situation: The Shrine Association Headquarters was situated right on the doorstep of a huge shrine that was no longer a part of said Association. The story just went to show, though, that shrines choosing to depart wasn’t that rare of an occurrence.

  “Which deity is enshrined there?”

  “It’s said to be dedicated to a kotoamatsukami—one of the earliest Shinto gods of creation.”

  “Sort of like the Mitake Shrine, then? What’s it doing all the way out here?”

  “We do have a few documents on display in the hotel with further details on that. If you’re curious enough, though, why not take a walk over to the shrine itself?”

  “Ah, good point. We’ll try to stop by if we get the chance.”

  Hearing that, the man bowed, then disappeared into the lobby.

  “A mansion built by a woman who washed up in Japan over four hundred years ago, huh...” I mused, turning my gaze back up to the fancy ceiling in the lobby. The interior had been heavily remodeled since those days, no doubt.

  “I wonder if the woman might’ve been English, and she drifted here on some kind of lifeboat?” Miyoshi asked.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She was the one who named the nearby beach, wasn’t she?”

  “Kuotogahama, was it? I know ‘otogahama’ means ‘maiden of the beach,’ but you think ‘ku’ would’ve originally used the kanji for ‘pain,’ representing the woman’s painful sea voyage that ended with her washing up on the beach? Honestly I’m not too keen on the actual kanji for ‘ku’ they use either—why would she be an ‘eternal’ maiden?”

  “I guess it would make sense if the priest who found her named the beach instead—especially if he ended up marrying her. But honestly, a Western woman from the 1600s wouldn’t have known the first thing about kanji. However, what if the ‘oto’ kanji was originally pronounced as ‘otsu’ instead?”

  “‘Kuotsu’? Oh! Quartz!”

  The white beach was most likely made of quartz. It would’ve made perfect sense for someone from England to call it “Quartz Beach.”

  “But weren’t all the ships coming in at the time Dutch or Portuguese?”

  “You realize that the Dutch Liefde had Anjin Miura on it, right? His real name was William Adams—a bona fide Englishman!” Miyoshi stated, looking out at the ocean through a window on the stair landing as we headed to our room on the second floor. “There was a man in England around that time, a favorite of Elizabeth I, named John Dee, who created the Enochian language after supposedly communing with the archangel Uriel through a crystal ball. I wouldn’t be surprised if ending up on a beach made from crystal fragments had some kind of special significance to her.”

  Speaking of which, the Holy Roman Emperor in 1600 was Rudolf II. While he might have been rather questionable as a statesman, he had been quite the intellectual, and had been apparently well-versed in things like sorcery and alchemy. If the woman in question happened to be aboard a ship that was part of the Holy Roman Empire, things like that certainly could have had an influence on her.

  “I wonder what exactly they traded here that made it thrive so much, though?” Miyoshi wondered.

  That was a good question. Tsuruga was just a short trip to the east, and it probably would’ve been a lot more profitable for them to have sold their goods over there. No doubt there would’ve been a lot more options for goods to take home too.

  “What was our main export at the time? Silver?” I asked.

  “Yup. Also Japanese swords and mother-of-pearl. Oh, and slaves, I suppose...”

  It was a historical fact that Portuguese ships collected slaves from all over the world—a common practice at the time. Even here in Japan, they enslaved the people of Nagasaki during the Kyushu campaign, and a number of Koreans were supposedly brought back after the Imjin War—though all that ended up being outlawed by the year 1600.