Now we come to soy sauce—and the story of how it first arrived on Shodoshima.

According to local tradition, it began with the men who came to the island to quarry stone. The workers brought food and seasonings from home to cut stone for the walls of Osaka Castle. Among them was something unfamiliar to the people of Shodoshima: soy sauce from Kishu, then renowned as the finest in Japan. After tasting it, the islanders wanted to learn how to make it themselves. They are said to have crossed the sea to Kishu to learn the craft.

Shodoshima turned out to be remarkably well suited to soy sauce production. The island was already a major salt producer, with more than it could use. Its mild winters provided good conditions for slow fermentation. And its shipping routes made it possible to bring in soybeans and wheat, then send the finished soy sauce to markets in Osaka. Stone quarrying may have introduced soy sauce to the island, but Shodoshima’s own conditions allowed the industry to flourish. In time, soy sauce became one of the island’s defining industries.

At its peak during the Meiji Period, Shodoshima is said to have had as many as four hundred soy sauce breweries. The heart of the industry is still known today as Hishio no Sato, the “Village of Soy Sauce.” Walk through its streets and you will find dark-walled breweries standing side by side, with the aroma of soy sauce in the air. The walls are not black simply because of age. Microorganisms involved in soy sauce production have settled there over generations, making the buildings themselves part of the fermentation environment. Inside, enormous cedar vats stand taller than a person. Some have been used for more than a century, yet they still ferment fresh moromi mash today. Only a small number of breweries in Japan continue to make soy sauce in traditional wooden vats, and Shodoshima is home to the largest concentration of these precious vats.

An island of stone. An island of legends. An island of soy sauce. These may seem like separate sides of Shodoshima, but they are all part of the same story. And that story is deeply connected to Himeji, across the sea.

Why have Himeji and Shodoshima been connected for so long? Perhaps the answer lies here, on the sea between them.