The Town That Chose to Remember
There is a particular kind of beauty that only comes after a long silence.
Not the beauty of something preserved behind glass — but the beauty of something that was left behind, and then slowly, quietly, reclaimed. By forest. By moss. By the people who chose to stay.
Iwami Ginzan is that kind of place.
I had read about it before I arrived. I knew the history — the silver, the UNESCO designation, the thousand tunnels in the mountains. But nothing I had read prepared me for what it actually felt like to be there. Or for the stories I would hear along the way.
A Place That Once Moved the World
To understand Iwami Ginzan, you need to know one fact: at its peak in the early 1600s, this remote corner of Shimane Prefecture was producing roughly a third of the world’s silver.
Silver was the currency of global trade. Ships carried Iwami silver — known in foreign markets as “Soma Silver” — to China, Korea, Portugal, and the Netherlands. For over three centuries, these mountains hummed with the sound of thousands of people working, smelting, trading, living.
And then the silver ran out. The people left. The forest grew back.
What makes Iwami Ginzan extraordinary, however, is not just the scale of what was produced. Unlike most silver operations of comparable size, the mine operated under careful controls on logging. The surrounding forests were managed to prevent the destruction that typically followed large-scale mining. Four hundred years later, those mountains are covered in dense, thriving forest. The thousand tunnels are barely visible beneath the canopy.
This harmony between human activity and the natural world was one of the reasons UNESCO recognized Iwami Ginzan in 2007.
The Tour That Changed Everything
I joined the one-coin tour on the day I visited — ¥500, departing from the World Heritage Center. I want to be upfront: this tour is conducted entirely in Japanese. If you are not a Japanese speaker, some of it will be beyond reach.
But if you are studying Japanese — even at an intermediate level — I would encourage you to try. The guides speak slowly and clearly. And what you gain from hearing these stories told by someone who grew up in the shadow of this mountain — that is something a translation cannot fully carry.
For those who would prefer a guided experience in English, there is another option. The Iwami Ginzan Guide Society offers English-language tours for ¥8,000 per guide — covering up to 10 guests, for up to 3 hours. It is not inexpensive. But I want to say this clearly: it is worth it.
The stories of this place — the miners who died young, the official who chose potatoes over protocol, the families who stayed when the silver ran out — deserve to be heard in full. Having a guide who can carry those stories to you in your own language is not a luxury. It is the difference between visiting a place and truly understanding it.
What struck me most was not the history itself — though the history is extraordinary. It was the way our guide spoke about this place. With love. With a quiet pride that was not about boasting, but about responsibility. The people of this town are not simply living in a World Heritage Site. They are the reason it became one.
One-coin tour (¥500): Japanese only. Departs from the World Heritage Center. Reservation recommended on weekends.
English guided tour: ¥8,000 per guide / up to 10 guests / up to 3 hours.
Contact the Iwami Ginzan Guide Society: Tel 0854-89-0120
Sahime Shrine: The Dragon on the Ceiling
The tour began at Sahime Shrine (佐毘売山神社) — a small shrine tucked into the hills near the mine entrance, the one that has watched over the silver mine for centuries. Most visitors walk past it without knowing it is there.
Step inside the main hall, and look up.
The entire ceiling is painted with an enormous dragon. Its scales are rendered in careful detail. Its eyes feel alive. And it fills the space above you completely — vast, patient, watching.
Clap your hands beneath it — as you would in prayer — and listen. The sound rises into the painted ceiling and returns differently than it should. A resonance. A ringing that seems to linger just a moment longer than physics would allow. The locals call it the dragon’s cry.
Look more closely at the ceiling, and you will see something else alongside the dragon: family crests, painted carefully in rows. When the shrine was rebuilt, the families and merchants who contributed to its reconstruction had their crests recorded here — a quiet register of community, preserved in pigment above the heads of everyone who enters.
It is a small place. Easy to miss. Don’t miss it.
The Official Who Chose People Over Power
On the tour, our guide told us about a man named Inoue Masatoshi — known today by the name Imo Daikan: the “Sweet Potato Official.”
In the early eighteenth century, Inoue served as the daikan — the government official — overseeing the Iwami Ginzan region. His era coincided with a devastating famine that swept through western Japan, leaving people starving across the countryside.
Inoue had encountered the sweet potato — at the time, a rare crop barely known in this part of Japan — and understood that it could be grown in poor soil, in cold climates, and could feed people where other crops failed. He began importing the potato and encouraging farmers across the region to cultivate it. He taught them how to grow it. He worked to spread it as widely and as quickly as he could.
This was not a simple act. Introducing a new crop without authorization from the government — prioritizing the survival of ordinary people over bureaucratic procedure — was an act that could have cost him his position, or worse. He knew the risk. He proceeded anyway.
Many lives were saved. And in this corner of Shimane, Inoue Masatoshi has never been forgotten. The people here remember him not as an official who followed orders, but as a samurai who understood that his position existed to serve the living — not the other way around.
Walking through a place with this kind of history, you begin to understand what made the people of Iwami Ginzan different. They were shaped by those who came before them. By a mine that chose not to destroy the forest. By an official who chose people over power. That spirit did not disappear when the silver ran out. It is still here.
Ryugenji Mabu: Into the Mountain
Of the thousand-plus tunnels in these mountains, only one is open to the public year-round: Ryugenji Mabu, which has been in operation since at least 1715.
You walk to the entrance along a quiet forest path, uphill through ancient cedar and cypress. The entrance appears almost without warning — a low, narrow opening in the rock face.
Step inside, and the temperature drops immediately. Cold air rises from somewhere deep in the rock. The tunnel narrows to roughly shoulder width. The ceiling hangs low.
Standing there, you understand something that words cannot fully prepare you for: a miner worked in a space exactly this size. Crouching. By candlelight. Digging by hand into solid rock. For years. For a whole working life. And many of them died young, before the silver they uncovered ever reached the ships that would carry it across the world.
Walking through Ryugenji Mabu is not dramatic. It is something quieter and more lasting — a physical reckoning with the labor and the lives that built this place.
🕐 9:00–17:00 (Dec–Feb: until 16:00) ／ Closed on January 1st
💴Admission: ¥200 ／ Discount available with passport
🎧 Audio guide (English / Korean / Chinese): ¥500 — available at Omori Tourist Information Center
Omori Town: A Street That Chose to Stay
Two kilometres from the mine entrance lies Omori — the small town that once administered the silver operation. At the height of the mine’s activity, as many as 200,000 people called this valley home. Today, the population is around four hundred.
And yet the town feels more alive than many places ten times its size.
Traditional wooden merchant buildings that have stood for centuries now house cafés, craft shops, bakeries, and small galleries. The street is narrow, unhurried, lined with old wood and whitewashed walls. One detail stopped me: the vending machines along Omori Street have been fitted with wooden casings, so they do not disturb the visual harmony of the streetscape.
The residents here are not simply living in a historical site. They are actively choosing to inhabit it with intention — to preserve not just the buildings, but the spirit of what this place has always been. One person at a time. One decision at a time.
That is what I felt most strongly walking through Omori. Not the past preserved. But the past, still living — because people here willed it to be so.
Walking down Omori’s main street, I noticed something that stopped me quietly in my tracks. In front of one of the old wooden merchant houses, a simple arrangement of flowers had been placed in a length of cut bamboo — small white blossoms, unhurried, just there.
It was not a decoration for a shop. It was not signage. It was an act of welcome. The people of Omori know that visitors come from far away to walk their street — and they have chosen to greet them with flowers.
This is omotenashi: the Japanese spirit of hospitality that asks nothing in return, that does not announce itself, that simply offers what it can with a full heart.
I want to ask something of you in return. Remember, as you walk this street, that you are a guest here. People live in these houses. They wake up here, cook meals here, raise their children here. The street you are walking is not a museum set — it is someone’s home. Walk gently. Speak softly. Receive the flowers with the same grace with which they were offered.
That is how you honour a place like this.
Lunch at Gunchendo — 群言堂でのランチ
For lunch, I ate at Gunchendo — and I want to say clearly: if you visit Omori, do not skip this.
Gunchendo is more than a restaurant. It is the heart of a philosophy — a company born in Omori that has made slow living, natural materials, and the beauty of Japanese rural life into both a way of doing business and a way of being. Their restaurant serves food that carries the same intention as everything else here: local, seasonal, quietly excellent.
The atmosphere is warm wooden interiors, natural light, unhurried service. Food that tastes like it came from nearby — because it did.
It tasted like Omori. Which is to say: it tasted like care.
Gohyaku Rakan: Five Hundred Faces
I have to be honest: I did not make it to the Gohyaku Rakan on this visit. Time ran out, as it always does in places you want to linger.
But I want to tell you about it — because the story behind it is one of the most moving things I encountered in all of Shimane.
Carved into three stone caves near the mine, 501 stone figures sit in silence — the Gohyaku Rakan, or Five Hundred Disciples of Buddha. Each one has a different face.
Mining was dangerous, brutal work. Men died young — from tunnel collapses, from toxic smelting fumes, from the relentless toll of working underground. The Gohyaku Rakan were carved in the mid-eighteenth century to memorialize those who had died in the mines. They were given individual faces so that the families of the deceased could come and find the one that resembled their loved one — and know that somewhere, in stone, their person was remembered.
Standing before them, you feel the weight of what this place cost. Not in silver. In lives.
I will go back for this.
🕐8:00～17:00（open every day of the year） ／ 💴¥500
Getting There
By car
From Izumo Airport, follow the San-in Expressway toward Oda City — approximately 1 hour 20 minutes.
By train and bus
Take the JR San’in Main Line from Izumoshi Station to Odashi Station (approximately 50 minutes), then a local bus to Iwami Ginzan (approximately 25 minutes). Bus services are limited — check schedules carefully in advance.
Within the site
No private vehicles are permitted on Omori Street. Rent a bicycle near the bus stop — ¥500 for 3 hours (standard) or ¥700 for 2 hours (electric) — or simply walk. Both are wonderful.
A Final Reflection
There is a Japanese phrase — mono no aware (物の哀れ) — the bittersweet awareness of impermanence. The feeling of something beautiful that is also, unmistakably, passing.
Walking through Iwami Ginzan, I felt it not as a concept, but as a physical sensation.
The forest has come back. The silver is gone. The men who dug these tunnels with their hands are centuries past. And yet something of them remains — in the moss on the stone walls, in the faces of five hundred figures, in a dragon painted on a ceiling that still cries when you clap, in the memory of a samurai who chose potatoes over protocol.
But what moved me most was this: the people of Omori did not simply inherit this place. They chose it. Generation after generation, they decided to stay. To maintain. To care.
That is a different kind of silver. One that does not run out.
With love from Japan,
Nanami 🌸
Practical Information
📍 1597-3 I-Omori, Oda, Shimane Prefecture 699-0305
🕐 9:00–17:30 (exhibition room until 16:30) ／ Closed: last Tuesday of the month & year-end/New Year holidays
💴 Adults ¥300 ／ Children ¥150
🚗 Approx. 1 hr 20 min from Izumo Airport ／ Approx. 25 min by bus from Odashi Station
📞 English guided tour: ¥8,000 per guide (up to 10 guests / up to 3 hours) ／ Iwami Ginzan Guide Society: Tel 0854-89-0120
Last updated: April 2026. Information is subject to change.
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