Seaside Literary Memorial Museum

In the early 20th century, Nagoya businessman Taki Nobushiro came up with a promotional strategy for the Tokiwakan inn he built on Mikawa Bay: invite prominent authors to stay for free, on the condition they write about the area afterward. It worked. Kawabata Yasunari, Tanizaki Junichiro, Shiga Naoya, and several others visited and wove Gamagori and Takeshima into their fiction. The museum built on the Tokiwakan's former site recreates a tatami room where Tanizaki stayed in August 1927, its shoji screens opening to a view of Takeshima across the water. Panels trace each writer's connection to the inn. The museum's Time Letters program lets visitors write a message to be mailed to any Japanese address up to ten years later.