Japan's Remote Islands & Island Life

About this book

Written and produced in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu (Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC) — a complete guide to Japan's island country, made in the country where these islands live.

Japan is not four islands. Beyond them lie more than four hundred inhabited islands — islands of flowers and islands of cats, islands of gold mines and islands of gods, islands emptied by volcanoes and islands rebuilt behind great seawalls, art islands and exile islands, islands a priest guards alone and islands no one may enter at all. Most are reached only by ferry, and the ferry decides everything: the shopping, the hospital run, the wedding, the day the young people leave.

Japan's Remote Islands & Island Life gathers 200 of those islands in one uniform format, from Rishiri in the cold Japan Sea to Yonaguni at the edge of the map. Each entry tells you what the island is like, what to see and do, how you reach it in typical terms — and the rule that matters there, from cat-island etiquette to the islands where landing is forbidden. A second paragraph gives the island's life: its history, its work, its faith and its place in the archipelago. Sacred islands, battlefields and difficult histories are treated with the respect they are owed. Seasons and access are given as the typical pattern of ordinary years, with a recorded check date, so the guide stays useful year after year.

Whether you are planning a ferry journey through the Seto Inland Sea, dreaming of the Ogasawara's Bonin Blue, or simply want to understand how a whole village organises its life around one boat a week, this is the volume that puts all 200 islands in one place.