Keino Matsubara

Keino Matsubara: A Manyo-Era Pine Grove on Awaji's West Coast

Keino Matsubara runs for roughly 2.5 kilometers along the western shore of Awaji Island, where a wide band of white sand meets the Harima Sea in Hyogo Prefecture. About 50,000 Japanese black pines (kuromatsu) grow across the dune-backed beach, just north of the point where the Mihara River reaches the sea. The grove was designated a national Place of Scenic Beauty (meisho) on 13 October 1928, and since 1955 it has lain within Setonaikai National Park, Japan's first national park spanning the Inland Sea.

The place name reaches back more than a thousand years. In the Manyoshu, the eighth-century anthology that is the oldest collection of Japanese poetry, the court poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro sang of the sea here under its ancient name, Kehi. His poem (Book 3, no. 256) pictures a calm sea and the small boats of fishermen scattering out across it like loose reeds. The modern reading Keino is generally traced to that older Kehi, and a stone bearing the verse stands today at the northern edge of the grove, near the public lodge Keino Matsubara-so.

From Domain Forest to National Scenic Site

The pines as a managed grove are thought to date to the medieval period, though the first written record of them comes only from the Kanbun era (1661 to 1672). During the Edo period the Tokushima domain held the land and tended the forest deliberately, valuing both the timber and the windbreak it gave the farmland behind it.

The grove's fortunes changed with the modern era. After the Meiji Restoration it passed first into state hands as government forest, then was sold off to private owners. The heaviest losses came during the Second World War, when the woodland fell under military administration: trees were cut for charcoal and fuel, and parts of the grove were cleared to grow food. What survives today is smaller than the Edo-period grove, and in 1961 the designated area was formally reduced to reflect that change.

Even in its reduced form the grove kept the reputation that had drawn writers to it for centuries. The Edo-period author Ihara Saikaku praised the strange and varied shapes of its many thousands of trees, remarking that, were the spot closer to the capital, court nobles would surely have made it their place for an afternoon nap.

Why It Was Designated

Keino Matsubara was listed under two of the criteria that govern Places of Scenic Beauty: one covering sites where flowering trees, grasses, autumn foliage, and evergreens grow thickly together, and another covering coastal landforms such as dunes, sandspits, and beaches. The grove qualifies on both counts. It is at once a dense stand of black pine and a long sweep of dune and shore, the two features reinforcing each other.

The 1928 designation notice compared its appearance to Niji-no-Matsubara, the celebrated pine grove on the coast of northern Kyushu, and ranked it among the finest pine groves in the Kinki region. That judgement still holds. Keino Matsubara appears on several national lists of natural scenery, including the hundred best white-sand-and-green-pine landscapes, the hundred best beaches, and the hundred best sunset spots. Its swimming beach was also picked by the Ministry of the Environment for the country's list of recommended bathing beaches in 2001 and given a top rating in a later 2006 selection.

What to Look For

The pines repay slow walking. Some are centuries old, their trunks leaning and twisting where coastal wind has shaped them over generations, and the contrast between the gnarled veterans and the straighter young trees gives the grove its character. Sand-loving shore plants grow at the dune edge, and the open beach beyond is broad and gently sloped.

Late afternoon is when most visitors come. The grove faces due west across the Harima Sea, so the sun sets straight out over the water, with the low silhouette of Shodoshima island on the far horizon. Watching that light through the black pines is the experience the sunset lists were made for, and people linger on the sand until well after the sun is down.

Threading through the trees is the Propose Road, a walking route laid out in 1997 using Awaji's celebrated roof tiles, a local craft product. Couples can commission an inscribed tile to set along the path, and the route gathers in a cluster of playful features: a small mound where folk custom has demons drive off bad luck at unlucky ages, a tile-paved lane lined with haiku and tanka, and a tiny shrine whose name puns on the word for roof tile and the phrase for unchanging love.

Visiting and Nearby

The grove itself is open ground with free access year round, and the sunset draws people in every season, not only in summer. The swimming beach operates from early July to late August, with paid parking in season, toilets, and coin-operated showers; fireworks are usually held in late July. Swimmers should note that jet skis and other marine sports are barred inside the bathing zone, and that camping and barbecues are not allowed within the beach park, so check current rules with the management office before planning an overnight stay.

Just north of the grove the shore continues into Goshiki-hama, a beach prized for its smooth, five-colored pebbles and protected as a prefectural natural monument. The public lodge Keino Matsubara-so sits right beside the pines and offers an open-air bath fed by the local Uzushio hot spring along with meals built around Awaji produce.

Awaji Island lies between Honshu and Shikoku, linked by expressway bridges at both ends. By car the grove is about five minutes from the Seidan-Mihara interchange on the Kobe-Awaji-Naruto Expressway. By bus from Sannomiya in Kobe, take a highway coach toward Fukura, get off at Riku-no-minato Seidan, and continue by taxi for roughly ten minutes.