There is nothing reassuring about hearing the voice of a flight attendant announcing that, because of adverse weather conditions, the plane may have to return to its point of origin. The craft had begun to feel like it was traveling blind through the storm, the gray press of cloud and vapor at the window a devil’s broth of opacity, the turbulence like passing over a washboard, or being pelted by hailstones.

It felt like a small miracle when the aircraft, heaving its way out of the hostile air, landed with a thump and a skid on the drenched tarmac at Noto Satoyama Airport. Boarding the limousine bus for Wajima, the noisy drama still being performed in the skies is downgraded to a mediocre mix of squalls and sleet.

The Noto Peninsula, jutting into the Sea of Japan like a serrated fishing hook in the north of Ishikawa Prefecture, feels like a self-contained zone. The region is easily overlooked. Many of the finest writers on the Japanese landscape — Matsuo Basho, Alan Booth, Lesley Downer, even that dedicated itinerant Fumiko Hayashi — skipped or skirted the peninsula.

Artisan enclave: Noto Peninsula craftsmen produce some of Japan’s finest lacquerware, many pieces of which are on display at the Wajima Museum of Lacquer Art. | STEPHEN MANSFIELD

The ever-attentive Donald Richie was among a handful of literary notables to visit. Commenting on the sense of inhabiting an independent topography in his book of essays “Partial Views,” he defined it as a “landscape composed only of its own salient elements.” According to oral sources Richie came across during his 1983 trip to the peninsula, the word Noto derived from the Ainu word “nopo,” meaning “set apart.” Its relative obscurity, even today, is reason enough for a visit.

The first thing I do after dumping my rucksack in the shabby hotel I have booked on the edge of Wajima is repair to the tourist information office, where a young woman springs into action when I ask what the options are on a rainy day. “Noto is all about culture,” she opines. “Getting visitors interested in our arts, crafts, architecture and all the other things that make this peninsula special is the only way to sustain tradition.”

The Noto Peninsula has been associated with lacquerware making for over 1,000 years and an astonishing one-third of Wajima residents work in the field. At least 70 layers of lacquer are applied to each piece, a painstaking process. Beautiful table and shelf displays turn otherwise quite ordinary shops into exhibition showrooms for Wajima-nuri, as it is known, but the most rewarding rainy-day venue is the Wajima Museum of Lacquer Art, designed to resemble the Shosoin, an imperial treasure house in Nara Prefecture. Along with local lacquerware, the museum exhibits modern works from other Asian countries.

I had no idea what kiriko were before coming to the peninsula. These turn out to be highly colorful, towering lanterns, rolled out for the town’s summer and autumn festivals. The Wajima Kiriko Art Museum, located on the waterfront eastern section of town, houses a huge collection of the lanterns. The lady at the tourist office had mentioned a “cultural performance” that night outside the museum, one I shouldn’t miss.

This would be the famous demon drummers of Noto, a troupe whose reputation precedes them. So fearsome are their visages that, in more ancient times, when advancing troops were sent into the region, locals dressed as demons would suddenly appear in the torch-lit camps of the soldiers, hair covered in seaweed, beating their drums and putting the fear of the gods into the recruits. The area was never fully pacified.

The rain had stopped by the time I reach the rear of the Kiriko Art Museum and I find a rush mat to sit on just below the stage. A metal shutter has been rolled up so that the darkened interior of the hall and its towers are just visible. The music starts with a slow tattoo, a light flirtation with the drum skins, building to a firmer pattern of low thumps, then a vigorous beating, the almost still percussionists now striking fearful poses, sweat trickling from beneath masks, naked muscles hardening and flexing to keep the powerful rhythms under control. The audience consists of mostly local people, one or two tourists and children, the latter shrinking into their parents’ arms every time one of the performers, staring from behind terrifying masks and hanks of long, unruly hair, rushes forward on the stage.

The next morning, the sun is out, and the forecast is for luminescent skies for the next few days. The products of the town, both the craft and the edible variety, are on full display at Wajima’s famous asaichi, or morning market, which starts at 8 a.m. beside the port. On any given day, you can expect to find around 200 vendors, and goods ranging from fresh fish and flowers to hand-painted chopsticks.

“Visitors like you are our main customers,” a man with a lacquerware stall tells me. “Most families on the peninsula have their own sets, many of them handed down from relatives, so the replacement level for pieces is quite low.” The future of tradition, he adds with a touch of irony, echoing the lady in the tourist center, has devolved to outsiders.

Paddies at the ready: Rice grown at Shiroyone Senmaida, a series of sea-facing rice terraces near the village of Sosogi, will be picked by hand once it ripens. | STEPHEN MANSFIELD

Heading north of the town, to the spectacular west coast of the peninsula, the hand of development and construction is mostly absent, leaving intact wonderfully rugged cliffs. Close to the village of Sosogi, the first sight of note along the coastal road is the Shiroyone Senmaida, a graduated set of sea-facing rice paddies. The terraces are neat and orderly, inserted side by side in almost geometrical patterns that remind me of the grids of a Mondrian canvas.

Lush green in late spring and summer, photos of the formations in winter show a stepped landscape blanketed by snow. Because the terraces are so steep, everything is done by hand. The winters are long and hard here, but have their own beauty. Images of the terraces in the early days of the New Year portray a crystalized, graduated ledge, embalmed in snow like an arctic steppe, buffeted by strong salt winds.

Further north still to Rokkozaki, the coastline turns fabulist, with surreal rock shapes and even, in one instance, a volcanic shelf surfaced in a mineral-rich green hue.

Wrangling salt from the sea: A woman rakes a salt-encrusted clay field at the Okunoto Salt Farm Village. | STEPHEN MANSFIELD

This hard-bitten coast is known for its quality salt production. The agehama method of extraction and drying involves sprinkling seawater over a hardened, clay-based field, raking it at regular intervals until it crystalizes and can be collected and sifted in pans, then boiled over a two-day period, resulting in a pure salt residue. The process is on full display at the Okunoto Salt Farm Village, where visitors first pass through a small museum before emerging onto the salt field.

It’s only a little inland from here to the Tokikuni Residences. Though today’s visitor may see what looks like a grand farmhouse, albeit an exquisite one designed with a thatched roof as precisely clipped as topiary, interior touches suggest aristocratic affectations. Among them is a grand entrance gable decorated with butterfly motifs, and a spacious room with a gold-trimmed, lacquered and coffered ceiling.

In a tale that speaks of hierarchic protocol and suffocating snobbery, it is said that when an inferior lord of the local Maeda clan visited, the gold trim was concealed with cloth before he could enter the room. One of the residences, the Shimo Tokikuni-ke, has a seasoned Japanese garden. With its rocks covered in lichen, grass and moss knotted with weeds, this not overly maintained landscape compares favorably with more exquisite, but rather fussily groomed Japanese gardens.

Sea defense: A local peers out from behind her bamboo fences, known as magaki, in the fishing port of Ozawa. | STEPHEN MANSFIELD

Photos taken of the old fishing village of Ozawa, a few kilometers from Wajima, draw my attention due to the unique use of bamboo defenses against the strong winds and typhoons that strike from across the sea. In person, I’m not prepared for the dimensions of these barriers, known as magaki fences, which are so tall they often obscure the homes standing behind them.

Renting a car for a day or two is all very well, but a desire to explore selected sites on foot results in three days of relentless walking. Gratifying though this is, by the end of the third day my feet are killing me and I have the blisters to prove it. Back in Wajima, I heave a sigh of relief when, on my final evening, I see a sign in English for the Yurari Footbath. Footbaths are usually open-air community facilities in Japan, meaning they are often free. This one is housed in its own building, a graceful wooden structure. If you chance upon this spot, be careful with the Japanese signage, though, making sure not to dip your feet in the outside, adjacent wanda-buro. This is strictly for dogs.

Noto Satoyama Airport is 25 minutes south of Wajima. Limousine buses connecting the airport and Wajima are regular. Trains operate from Kanazawa as far as Anamizu Station, midway up the peninsula, but direct buses from Kanazawa Station to Wajima are more convenient. The Wajima Tourism Association is located in Wajima Bus Station.Drum performances take place every evening between July 17 and Oct. 17, 2019, except for July 31 and Aug. 1 & 30.

In line with COVID-19 guidelines, the government is strongly requesting that residents and visitors exercise caution if they choose to visit bars, restaurants, music venues and other public spaces.