Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands. Robert Walker

      Akuseki is surrounded by steep cliffs.

      The island’s port is built into a natural inside elbow on the center west side of the island, which, with the addition of tons of sturdy Japanese concrete, forms a small bay. There’s no village there, however. To reach town you travel up the hillside a little less than a mile (1 kilometer). Because Akuseki is fairly popular with adventurous Japanese travelers, it gets more visitors than most other Tokara Islands. Thus, there’s a grand total of five minshuku on this island! The village is set on a plateau in the southwest corner of Akusekijima.

      Akuseki has two fairly good-sized peaks: 1,916-feet (584-meter)-tall Mt Ontake (御岳; On-také) and 1,453-feet (443-meter) Mt Nakadake (中岳; Naka-daké), But as the whole island is relatively elevated, they don’t particularly stand out. The population is about 75 and, like many of Japan’s remote islands, has been gradually declining for years. Most young people today are simply not content with a sugar cane farmer’s life or a fisherman’s. Once they leave, they essentially never return. That’s why on almost all the smaller Ryukyus, you’ll see lots of old people, a few youngsters and not so many middle-aged. It’s a real conundrum and is nowhere close to being solved.

      It’s difficult to say why the early peoples who named Akuseki decided that it was a “bad” or an “evil” stone island, but they did, and that’s its name. Perhaps from an agriculturalist’s point of view, it was just a rock and thus infertile. With its dramatic cliffs, it was also tough to approach. That sounds like a good reason to name it “bad,” but “evil” ?

      In more recent times however, there was a terribly tragic event nearby Akuseki. Just offshore, on the night of August 22, 1944, the Tsushima-maru (対馬丸), an unmarked, unlit passenger and cargo ship, fully loaded with 1,484 evacuee civilians, including 826 schoolchildren, on their way to Kagoshima from Okinawa, was torpedoed by the USS Bowfin, an American navy submarine. Only 59 children survived. Everyone else perished. It’s one of the uglier incidents in a terrible war and something that’s not usually mentioned in US schoolchildren’s history books. Not until 20 years after the sinking did the crew of the Bowfin learn of the victims. In Japan, the survivors were forbidden to speak of the incident. The Bowfin was decommissioned in 1954 and presently serves as a memorial and submarine museum in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The wreck of the Tsushimamaru was located and identified in December 1997. There is a small museum dedicated to the Tsushima-maru story in Naha, Okinawa.

      Akusekijima has a couple of hot springs less than a mile (1 kilometer) north of the port, but the island is best known for its unusual Mask God Festival, held every year. The Bozé Matsuri (ボゼ祭) is dedicated to the island’s mask god Bozé. It’s a local variant of Japan’s Bon festival, held each year on the 16th day of the 7th month on the traditional lunar calendar, which translates to sometime between August and September on today’s Western calendar. The festival is a unique and special event. The island’s men dress up in bizarre but spectacular costumes made of palm leaves and husk, representing the masked god Bozé. Their dance is supposed to scare away the devils and bring in the New Year.

      Akusekijima Bozé mask gods.

      8 KOJIMA 小島

      Kojima (小島; Ko-jima) is an uninhabited islet about three-quarters of a mile (1 kilometer) to the east of Kotakarajima, its big brother. The ferry does not stop, it just passes by on its way to Kotakara Island. Kojima’s name, which most appropriately means “Little Island,” is a fairly well-formed circle about 1,890 feet (575 meters) across when the tide’s out. When the tide’s in, that is during a high tide, only its central, vegetated core is above water. At those times, it would be an isle with a diameter of approximately 660 feet (200 meters). Kojima and its two “treasure island” neighbors to the west and southwest form a little subgroup of three 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the southwest of the first seven islands and an equal distance to the northeast of the final, tiny group of two uninhabited islets.

      Kojima’s Most Common Residents

       Typical on all the Tokara Islands are wild hibiscus bushes (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) and the Red Helen butterfly (Papilio helenus), a type of black swallowtail.

      9 KOTAKARAJIMA 小宝島

      As the ferry makes its way south, island to island, perhaps you might have mused that the previous inhabited island, Akusekijima, was indeed small, about 1.25 by 2 miles (2 by 3.5 kilometers) and, after all, how can anyone live there? Well, contemplate this: Kotakarajima (小宝島; Ko-takara-jima) is smaller. In fact, this island, whose name means “Little Treasure Island,” is the smallest inhabited island in the Tokara Archipelago, measured both by population and area. As for people, the most recent population count was 37 inhabitants. As for size, the island is a little round circle just about exactly three-quarters of a mile (1 kilometer) in diameter.

      Since one is such a nice easy number, let’s figure out just how big (or small) this island really is. If you remember your high school geometry, the area of a circle is its radius squared times pi. For our purposes, pi (π) can be approximately 3.1416. The mathematical formula is: A = r2 x π. Therefore, since the diameter of Kotakara is three-quarters of a mile (1 kilometer), its radius is ½ or .50 of three-quarters of a mile (1 kilometer). One-half times one-half equals one-quarter (½ x ½ = ¼ or .50 x .50 = .25). One-quarter times π equals 0.7854 kilometers (.25 x 3.1416 = 0.7854). Thus, Kotakarajima’s area is a bit more than ¾ of a square kilometer. Euclid move over!

      The southern port side of Kotakarajima, the smallest inhabited island in the Tokara Archipelago.

      Expressed another way, 0.7854 square kilometers equals 0.3033 square miles or less than ⅓ of a square mile. By any means of reckoning, that’s pretty small.

      Here’s one more calculation. The circumference of a circle is its diameter times pi, or expressed mathematically, C = d x π. It can also be expressed as C = (2 x radius) x π. Therefore, the circumference of Kotakara is three-quarters of a mile (1 kilometer) times π (1 x 3.1416 = 3.1416) or 3.1416 kilometers. In fact, the circumference of the island is a little bigger as it’s not a perfect circle. Walking its slightly irregular shoreline measures 3 miles (4.5 kilometers); and similarly, its area is a bit closer to one full square kilometer. Like tiny uninhabited Kojima next door, Kotakarajima loses about one-quarter to one-third of its surface area twice a day during high tides. Therefore, the homes and other structures on the island are built on the higher ground, which is otherwise covered in year-round vegetation.

      Kotakarajima

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