Reigandou is in a forest on a secluded hillside just outside Kumamoto city centre.

Also known as Musashi’s Cave, it’s the spot that legendary swordsman Musashi Miyamoto retreated to in the final years of his life, to write Go Rin No Sho (’The Book of Five Rings’).

These days it’s something of a pilgrimage destination.

The path to Musashi’s cave is long, and the mountainside along the route is dotted with ‘500 Buddhas’. On a sunny spring day, in a silence punctuated only by the buzzing of insects, it’s quite a sight.

The statues, which took more than 20 years to carve and erect, were designed to show different emotions. Now, though, many of them have lost their head either to souvenir hunters or to earthquakes.

Finally reaching the end of the long path, you climb up a steep staircase into the cave itself, where there is a shrine, and a bench to rest your weary legs.

Reigandou is a long way off the beaten track, probably only accessible by car, or by the most dedicated of hikers. It didn’t appear to be much of a tourist haunt. And yet, when we arrived late in the morning, two pages of the guest book had already been filled that day already. There are a lot of Musashi devotees out there, it seems.