Kagoshima lies under a volcano, and that explains almost everything about it. Sakurajima, the smoking mountain across the bay, erupts often enough that locals carry umbrellas against falling ash, and its cone dominates every view. The city of more than half a million people sits on the bay of Kinko, with the volcano just a short ferry ride away, and the warm climate gives it palm trees and an air of the south.
Shuseikan is the reason the city matters in industrial history. In the 1850s, Shimazu Nariakira, the lord of Satsuma, started an ambitious programme to build Western-style industry, with a reverberatory furnace, a glass workshop, a cannon foundry and a spinning mill, all gathered at this site on the shore. The factory complex was one of the first in Japan, begun even before the Meiji Restoration, and the remains are part of the Meiji Industrial Revolution World Heritage group. The old spinning mill building, one of the earliest Western-style factories in the country, still stands, and the Shimazu family's garden, Iso Garden, adjoins it, with a view across the bay to Sakurajima.
The riding in the area is a pleasure. The coastal road along the bay gives long views of the volcano, and the Sakurajima road circles the mountain with ash-covered fields and hot springs. Roads are narrow in places and ash on the surface can be slippery when wet, so keep your speed measured. Typhoons arrive from the south in late summer, and the temperature is mild in winter.
Food is part of the pleasure. Kagoshima is famous for kurobuta, black pork, and for satsuma-age, deep-fried fish cakes, and its sweet potato shochu is the local drink. Fuel is easy in the city, and ferries to Sakurajima run all day and night. Walk the grounds of the garden and take your time with the old buildings. The volcano, grumbling on the horizon, adds a sense that nothing here is quite permanent.