Fukuda Port is a little different from Shodoshima’s other ports. Most visitors arrive through Tonosho Port, the island’s main gateway. Fukuda lies farther around the coast, in a more remote part of the island. The local bus takes well over an hour to travel between the two. But that distance also means Fukuda offers scenery that many visitors to Shodoshima never get to see.

Look at the mountains around the harbor. Here and there, patches of pale rock appear through the greenery. This is granite—the stone that has shaped Fukuda’s history.

In the early Edo Period, stone from Shodoshima was chosen for the reconstruction of Osaka Castle. The Tokugawa shogunate had ordered a massive rebuilding project, and feudal lords from western Japan quarried enormous stones in different parts of the country for the castle walls. Shodoshima, with its high-quality granite and easy sea access, became one of the major sources. Quarries were opened across the island, including here in Fukuda. Around four hundred years ago, huge blocks of stone were cut from these mountains and carried across the very waters you see before you, bound for Osaka.

Stone remains an important part of life in Fukuda today. Stone companies can still be found around the harbor, and local families continue to work with mountains through generations. Near the port, the former Fukuda Elementary School has been transformed into a Japan Heritage center. Exhibits on stonecutting tools, transportation techniques, and the journeys these stones made across Japan preserve the story of an industry that has shaped Fukuda for centuries.

And Shodoshima stone traveled far beyond Osaka Castle. It was also used for the stone bridge at the main entrance to the Imperial Palace. An even more unexpected example is the small stone pillars used as triangulation points on mountaintops throughout Japan. Many of these were also made from Shodoshima stone. So if you climb a mountain somewhere in Japan and come across one of these markers, remember Fukuda. The stone you see may have come from the mountains beside this port.

But stone is not the only reason this island has drawn people here over the centuries.