Kamakura

Kamakura's shape made it a fortress: ridges on three sides, the sea on the fourth, and only narrow passes cut through the rock to enter. Minamoto no Yoritomo chose it as his base in 1180, moved the Hachiman shrine of his ancestors to its present hill in 1191, and after defeating the Taira became shogun in 1192, ruling from here while the emperor remained in Kyoto. Power soon passed to the Hojo family as regents, and for a century and a half this small coastal town governed Japan.

It grew into one of the country's largest settlements, with a merchant quarter, a port at Wakae and a stream of Chinese monks who brought Zen Buddhism, Song architecture and new ideas about tea. Kenchoji was founded in 1253 and Engakuji in 1282, the latter dedicated to the dead of the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281. The Great Buddha was cast in 1252, inside a hall that later storms and a tsunami destroyed, leaving the statue in the open. New Buddhist schools, including those of Nichiren, took root in the valleys.

The shogunate fell in 1333, when imperial forces broke into the town and hundreds of the Hojo took their own lives. Kamakura declined for centuries into a village among ruins, its temples decayed and its harbour silted. The railway from Tokyo arrived in 1890 and revived it as a seaside resort, then as a retreat for writers, artists and industrialists whose villas filled the valleys. Today its temples, shrines and archaeological remains are proposed for World Heritage listing, and the town lives as both a monument and a commuter suburb.

Zen shaped the town's manners as much as its buildings. The monasteries of Kita-Kamakura still run zazen sittings open to the public, temple gardens are kept to a deliberate austerity, and the tea, calligraphy and vegetarian cooking that came with Chinese monks remain part of local practice. Sculpture from the Kamakura period — muscular, realistic and unlike the courtly work of Kyoto — is the art that the town gave to Japan, along with the lacquered woodcarving still made as Kamakura-bori.

A second layer is literary. From the 1920s writers settled here in such numbers that they were known as the Kamakura bunshi; bookshops, small galleries and long-standing cafés follow from that. A third layer is the beach: surfing has long been part of life on this coast, and the shops, music and slow pace along the Enoden line owe as much to that as to the temples.

The festival year mixes the three. Horseback archery at the main shrine recalls the warriors, painted lanterns in August involve local artists and writers, and the summer sea brings fireworks and beach huts. Residents are protective of a small town that receives millions of visitors, and rules about litter, eating in the street and parking are enforced with more insistence than in most places in Japan.

About 172,000 people live in Kamakura, on a narrow strip of flat land between the hills and the sea. It is an expensive and desirable address: many residents commute to Tokyo or Yokohama, and the valleys hold older houses on large plots alongside newer apartment blocks near the stations. The population is ageing faster than the national average, and schools and clinics are spread thinly across the valleys.

Tourism is the visible industry — temples, restaurants, shops and the railways — but much of the working population leaves each morning by train. Small-scale farming continues on the ridges and in the valleys, supplying the town's market with the vegetables it is known for, and fishing boats work from Koshigoe and the neighbouring ports.

Living with visitors is the everyday issue. Weekend and hydrangea-season crowds fill the Enoden, block narrow lanes and strain parking, and the town has tried measures including requests not to eat while walking and appeals to travel outside peak hours. Beyond that, the hazards of the coast shape planning: tsunami evacuation routes are signposted, hillsides are monitored for landslides after heavy rain, and building in the wooded valleys is tightly controlled.

Shirasu, the tiny whitebait of Sagami Bay, is the town's dish. It is served raw when the fishing season allows, or boiled until white, and piled over rice as a bowl called shirasu-don, often with nori and ginger. Restaurants along the beach road and in the centre serve little else at lunchtime, and dried shirasu is sold as a souvenir. Other local seafood — sea bream, horse mackerel and, at Enoshima, grilled squid — follows the same short route from boat to plate.

The Zen inheritance is the other thread. Shojin ryori, the vegetarian cooking of the monasteries, appears at restaurants near the temples: tofu in several forms, sesame, simmered vegetables and clear broths, presented in small dishes. Kamakura vegetables, grown on the surrounding slopes and sold at the town's morning market, have become a brand of their own and turn up in cafés as salads and soups.

Snacking is done on Komachi Street, where stalls sell croquettes, grilled rice cakes, sweet potato chips, soft ice cream and skewers, and where queues form for the best-known shops. The classic gift from Kamakura is hato sabure, a crisp butter biscuit in the shape of a dove, made here since the late 19th century and packed in yellow tins; the other is kurumi-mochi and similar rice sweets sold near the shrine approach.