Sights in Izu Hantō
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Ryōsen-Ji Treasure Museum
Located next to Ryōsen-ji temple is the Ryōsen-ji Treasure Museum, displaying exhibits relating to the arrival of Westerners in Japan. These include pictures depicting Okichi-san, a courtesan who was forced to give up the man she loved in order to attend to the needs of the brutal barbarian, Harris. When Harris left Japan five years later, Okichi-san was stigmatised for having had a relationship with a foreigner and she was eventually driven to drink and suicide.
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Ryōsen-Ji
About 700m south of Izukyū Shimoda Station is Ryōsen-ji, which is now famous as the site where Commodore Perry and representatives of the Tokugawa shōgunate signed a treaty whose conditions (favourable to the US, of course) supplemented those outlined in the Treaty of Kanagawa, which was signed, in 1854.
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Chōraku-Ji
Next door to Ryōsen-ji is Chōraku-ji, a pleasant little temple that is worth a quick look.
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Hōfuku-ji
In the centre of town is Hōfuku-ji, a temple that is chiefly a museum memorialising the life of Okichi.
The museum is filled with scenes and artefacts from the various movie adaptations of her life on stage and screen. Okichi's grave is also here, in the far corner of the back garden, next to a faded copper statue. Other stones in this garden are dedicated to her, with the names of actors who played her.
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Shimoda Kōen & Wakanoura Promenade Park
If you keep walking east from Perry Rd, you'll reach the pleasant hillside park of Shimoda Kōen, which overlooks the bay. It's loveliest in June, when the hydrangeas are in bloom. The coastal road is also a fine place to walk. If you have an hour or so, keep following it around the bay, passing an overpriced aquarium, and eventually you'll meet up with the 2km-long Wakanoura Promenade, a stone path along a peaceful stretch of beach.
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Ryōsen-ji & Chōraku-ji
A 25-minute walk south of Shimoda Station is Ryōsen-ji, site of the treaty that opened Shimoda, signed by Commodore Perry and representatives of the Tokugawa shōgunate. The temple's Black Ship Art Gallery displays artefacts relating to Perry, the Black Ships, and Japan as seen through foreign eyes and vice versa.
Behind and up the steps from Ryōsen-ji is Chōraku-ji, where a Russo-Japanese treaty was signed in 1854; look for the cemetery and namako-kabe (black-and-white lattice-patterned) walls.
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Gyokusenji
Founded in 1590, this Zen temple is most famous as the first Western consulate in Japan, established in 1856. A small museum has artefacts of the life of Townsend Harris, the first consul general. The bas-relief of a cow in front of the temple depicts the serving of the first glass of milk in Japan, which Harris requested during an illness. It's a 25-minute walk from Shimoda Station, or take bus 9 to Kakizaki-jinja-mae (¥160, five minutes).
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