Anamizu · JP

Flathead Mullet Watchtower

Out on the calm shore of Anamizu Bay, a slender tower of lashed logs rises from the shallow water and tapers to a tiny seat at its peak. This is the Flathead Mullet Watchtower, or bora-machi yagura in Japanese, a relic of what is often called Japan's oldest fishing method. For centuries local fishermen perched here from dawn to dusk, scanning the glassy inlet for a passing school of mullet and hauling a hidden net up from the seabed when the fish drifted over it. Today the fishing has stopped, but the watchtowers along National Route 249 remain one of Anamizu Town's most photographed landmarks on the Noto Peninsula. The watchtower is a piece of living folk history rather than a stately monument. Built from logs lashed into a pyramid roughly ten metres tall, it was part of a waiting fishery so perfectly tuned to the habits of the flathead mullet that it drew the admiration of a famous foreign visitor. At the Neki site you pull in at a small roadside park, step out, and look across the still bay at the silhouetted scaffold, with the faint outline of a figure perched on top.