Tsukumi, Oita

The ferry schedule at Horishima's small harbor runs on its own logic, and the boats that come and go carry tuna — Horishima maguro — that the island has built its reputation around for generations. Tsukumi sits on Bungō Strait, pressed between the Shiura and Nagame peninsulas, its bay almost enclosed, the water rarely far from view. Limestone quarried from the hills feeds a cement industry whose presence you feel in the industrial silhouette along the coast, an unexpected counterpart to the citrus terraces climbing the slopes above.

Those slopes carry a history longer than most Japanese cities care to claim. The ancestor tree of the Ozaki Ko-mikan, a gnarled citrus trunk designated a national natural monument, has stood in Tsukumi since the Nara period first saw mandarin cultivation take root here. The fruit still matters: Sunkist-adjacent varieties like San Queen and Kiyomi come off local farms, and the mountain sansho pepper grown here adds a different note to the table. At the port-side market of Sato no Eki Tsukumi Marché, these products sit alongside gyorokke — a local fish croquette — sold without ceremony.

The Tsukumi Sensu Odori, a fan dance designated as an intangible folk cultural property by the prefecture, surfaces each year alongside the port festival and the island summer celebrations at Horishima. Sōrin Park holds the grave of the Christian daimyo Ōtomo Sōrin, its tombstone designed by Isozaki Arata in a Christian style — an unlikely monument in a quiet harbor town, but Tsukumi has always held more than its modest footprint suggests.