Proclaimed as an unparalleled store of wealth, the mines of distant Sado Island have had a prominent place in every era of recorded Japanese history, and their gold has been inlaid in the halls of shrines and castles (such as Nijo Castle in Kyoto) for hundreds of years.

Under the shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, the mines saw their peak of use in the 1600’s. Due to Ieyasu’s policy of seclusion, Sado’s technological developments came slowly, and it remained—rather uniquely—entirely manually operated well into the 19th century.

The island’s ocean borders, and the impossibility of international influence, turned Sado into its own sort of machine, self-sustaining, self-reliant, with a culture informed by a singular attention to the craft. The earth was cracked so wide that the mountains themselves were split, with Sado’s famous, V-shaped “Doyu-no-Warito” rift itself a product of hardy, human ingenuity.