Getting Around Tokushima 2026

Tokushima Prefecture occupies the northeastern corner of Shikoku island, facing Osaka Bay and the Kii Channel across the Naruto Strait. It is best known for two very different natural spectacles: the Naruto whirlpools, where powerful tidal currents collide to form swirling vortices up to 20 meters across, and the remote Iya Valley, a steep, cedar-forested gorge in the prefecture's mountainous interior where vine suspension bridges have carried travelers across the Iya River for centuries. Tokushima City, the capital, is famous nationwide for the Awa Odori, Japan's largest traditional dance festival, held every August since the Edo period and drawing over a million spectators. The prefecture was historically Awa Province, ruled for nearly 300 years by the Hachisuka clan from Tokushima Castle, and its Edo-period wealth was built on the cultivation and trade of Awa-ai indigo dye, a craft still practiced today.

Tokushima Prefecture sits on the eastern coast of Shikoku and is unusually well connected to Honshu for a Shikoku destination, thanks to the Akashi-Kaikyo and Onaruto Bridges that carry the Kobe-Awaji-Naruto Expressway directly from Kobe and Osaka to Naruto. Most visitors arrive by highway bus across these bridges or fly into small Tokushima Awaodori Airport. Within the prefecture, JR Shikoku's Mugi Line runs south along the coast toward the surf towns of Kaifu and Shishikui, the Naruto Line links Tokushima City to the whirlpools, and the Tokushima and Dosan lines connect toward the mountainous interior, though a rental car is the most practical way to reach the Iya Valley and Mount Tsurugi.