By Will Aitken

I follow the wide, carefully tended path alongside the river. Pines stretch up to the sky's blue immensity. A lone fisherman in a straw hat prepares to cast from the opposite shore. The Kakusan Gorge is so beautiful, the air so clear, the birdsong so piercing, there's an air of unreality about this walk, as though it exists outside of time.

In a way it does, because people come from all over the world to this isolated peninsula in northern Honshu, a three-hour train ride from Tokyo, to stroll this path and to view the same landscape that Basho, one of Japan's greatest and most influential poets, first visited in 1689. He bathed at a mineral springs in Yamanaka Onsen, the village at the end of this walk, and afterward wrote these lines:

After bathing for hours
In Yamanaka's waters
I couldn't even pick a flower.

Which is precisely how one feels after bathing in the heated waters of local mineral springs, so relaxed and rubber-boned the slightest effort seems out of the question.

Basho—his real name was Munefusa Matsuo (1644-1694)—was Japan's greatest composer of haiku, although in his day these short elusive poems were called hokku and, until Basho came along, were an essentially playful form, a brief poem that acted as prelude to a longer work. Basho perfected haiku as a serious form that could stand alone, changing it from a poem of amusement to one that takes an image from the natural world and, in one critic's words, "leaves it suspended in the mind, like a raindrop at the tip of a leaf."

For a poet noted for the stark simplicity of his lines, Basho led a tumultuous life. Born into the samurai class but with no interest in fighting, he appears to have thrived in cosmopolitan Edo, as Tokyo was then called. More amorously disposed than a true samurai was meant to be, he dallied with ladies of the imperial court, had a common-law wife, developed an unrequited love for a female Buddhist nun and also had time to be "fascinated by the ways of homosexual love." Sponsored by wealthy patrons, he perfected his art and achieved fame as a poet.By the age of 45 he'd grown tired of the worldliness of his ways and, over the next four years took four extended journeys on foot—the one that brought him to Kakusan Gorge and Yamanaka was more than 1000 kilometres long. Travel was as dangerous as it was arduous then, and he and his walking companion, Sora, also a poet, dressed as penniless Buddhist monks, wearing simple straw sandals and matching hats and leading a Spartan existence. He wrote books about his journeys, which mixed haiku with brief but intense prose descriptions of life on the road. Like any writer worth his salt, he was not always truthful, claiming to have visited places he'd never seen. And as for his humble ways, he and Sora usually stayed, not in picturesque huts where they shared frugal meals, but instead lived well in the villas of wealthy merchant-class patrons along the way.

So I don't feel so bad about staying at Kayotei ryokan (a traditional inn), conveniently located at the start of Basho's path.  The Kayotei's one of Japan's finest inns, a simple low-slung building of wood and glass that's so a part of its hilly, wooded landscape it's hard to tell where the inn ends and the forest begins. Founded in 1976 by a local family, the Kamaguchis, who previously had owned a 200-room inn nearby, the Kayotei has only ten rooms and suites, all connected by a wide corridor that gives on to a splendid inner courtyard garden.

In the entryway I exchanged my hiking boots for soft slippers and proceeded to heft my duffle bag. But a tiny kimonoed maid named Chiyoda wrenched it from my hands. When I protested that it was too heavy, she gently reprimanded me:  "But it’s my job, sir!" I followed her along an airy corridor decorated with calligraphy scrolls, antiques and large ceramic sculptures, its exterior glass wall giving ever-changing views of the courtyard garden.

The elements of the guest room in a ryokan are always the same—tatami mats on the floor, a long low lacquer table, a few cushions to sit on, an alcove featuring a flower arrangement and a calligraphy scroll and translucent shoji screens covering the window. It's the harmonious and proportionate juxtaposition of these elements that distinguishes one inn from another, and at the Kayotei the effect is pure bliss:  a spare elegant space that instantly calms the mind.

Chiyoda slides open the shoji screens to reveal a wide balcony overlooking a dense wood. She brings me green tea in a small porcelain cup and departs. I take it out onto the balcony—it's like living in a treehouse, a hundred gradations of green, scores of birds swooping from branch to branch and the distant sound of a rushing river.

When Chiyoda taps at my door an hour later I haven't budged from the balcony. She urges to me to change into the simple cotton yukata (dressing gown) that's folded on the shelf in the closet, along with a heavier long vest in dark blue brocade with frogging instead of buttons. Guests at ryokan can wear the yukata in the corridors, for going to and from the public and private baths; the vest is worn for more formal occasions, like dinner, or when it's cool outside.

'Dinner' is a poor word for the banquet the Kayotei chef has prepared in the kaiseki style, a series of small perfect dishes, as delicious as they are lapidary in their presentation. Kaiseki was originally a meal developed to accompany the tea ceremony, but now it simply means a repast with a profusion of courses. The Kayotei prides itself on preparing entirely organic meals, using local produce and the fresh fish from the Sea of Japan (vegetarian meals are available on request). A kaiseki dinner is always leisurely, so one has time to appreciate not only complex tastes of each course, but also the delicacy of the porcelain and ceramic bowls and the darkening garden beyond the window wall of the small private dining room. Dry plum wine on the rocks serves as aperitif, a fine local sake follows.

I get up early next morning to take advantage of the outdoor private bath a few steps along the corridor from my room. A stone walkway leads to a small wooden pavilion and a spacious rectangular bath. I scrub myself down before entering the bath and then ease into the hot water. And there I lounge for an hour, staring deep into the forest and listening to the birds and the hidden river.

The next morning the Kayotei has arranged for me to visit the private studio of a local lacquerware artist named Satake Yasuhiro. Yamanaka is said to produce the finest lacquerware in Japan—they've been making it in this village for 400 years--and that's saying a lot, since Japan is noted for producing some of the finest and most lustrous lacquerware in the world. Yasuhiro takes us first to a warehouse and studio where wooden bowls are turned on lathes before they're coated with lacquer. In the warehouse itself, thousands of unlacquered bowls are stacked in scores of thick towers three meters tall, so that they appear like the skyline of a city thickly planted with skyscrapers and hung with sawdust clouds.

In a smaller workshop, Satake's 28-year-old son Yasuchi, who studied woodworking on Salt Spring Island, turns a bowl made of blackwood, a dark wood of the acacia species with a dense centre. The wood's so hard he uses a metal-grinding machine that has been converted to work on wood.

The bowl then goes to a master lacquerer, who coats the wood with lacquer. When I asked Satake where lacquer comes from he answered, "The lacquer tree," which turns out to be a kind of spruce with highly toxic sap. This sap is combined with sand to create a kind of mud, which is applied to the wooden bowls. The lacquer must then harden for ten to twelve hours in a humidor, then it’s carefully polished and several more coats are applied and polished until the bowl has a glowing, immaculate surface. Conventional lacquerware is the result of two or three coats of lacquer; Satake insists on eight coats.

The result is evident in the studio he has in his house, a breathtaking space full of bowls, vases, boxes and goblets, coated in jewel-like shades of orange, black, amber, red and plum lacquer—they're so glossy they seem lit from within. Yasuhiro's work has been displayed around the world, most notably at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, the world's greatest museum of art and design.

Seated at a low table, Yasuhiro shows me an oversized wine goblet in gold lacquer, which sells for $1000. I search about the shelves for something more affordable and come up with a shallow sake cup about 6 centimetres in diameter. The lacquer is clear so the grain of the wood shows through in the finest striations. The cup weighs like a feather in my hand and cost $70, which seems a small price for a work of art.

But Satake insists his pieces aren't art—it's for use not display. He urges visitors to serve food in it, drink from it and wash it the way they would wash their hands, with a mild detergent, a soft cloth and lukewarm water. "It's important that lacquerware is exposed to humidity," he says, "but using it once a week will keep it humid enough." Never put it in the fridge or the microwave but  "don't be afraid of marking it up—a mark on lacquerware is like a scar on your hand. You wouldn't stop using your hand because of the scar." For Satake, drinking from a sake cup or a tea bowl is the best way to experience lacquerware because "lacquer is softest on the lips," compared to the cold hardness of glass and ceramic.

You can see all of Yamanaka in a half and hour's walk, but why would you want to hurry through this charming mountain village? One of the most startling sights is Ayatori Hashi (Cat's Cradle Bridge) that twists across the Kakusen Gorge to Basho's Path. This steel span is like no bridge you've encountered, seeming more like an organic thing than an engineered one, its steel as pliant as bamboo. It was designed by the late Hiroshi Teshigahara, who headed Tokyo's legendary Sogetsu ikebana school. Film fans will also remember him as director of the 1964 cult classic, "Woman in the Dunes."

The town's central square includes a jewel-box theatre for traditional dances and folksongs, as well the Chrysanthemum Bath, named for the flower that the freshly bathed Basho was too weak to pluck. There's also an al fresco mineral footbath for the weary feet of passersby. On streets leading away from the square are shops specializing in lacquerware, ceramics and hand-blown glass. The quality of crafts on sale here is very high and, in terms of value for money, very reasonable as well.

But for me the highlight of Yamanaka is the small museum dedicated to Basho and his writings. The museum acts as a gathering point for contemporary haiku poets, and has on display editions of his most famous works as well as a hanging scroll Basho wrote during his stay in Yamanaka. The old woman who takes tickets at the museum accompanied me out into the intricately planted garden and then, as I was preparing to leave, sang me a traditional song from the area, its melancholy melody sounding as old as the surrounding mountains.

In his most famous book, The Narrow Road to the Interior, Basho noted, "The moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home." Not only a great poet, but a consummate travel writer as well.