[Yashima] Listening to Stories of Island Life in a Community of Fewer Than 20 People
The ferry from Murotsu Port runs only three times a day. The trip to Yashima takes about 30 minutes and costs ¥590. We were the only passengers on board.
A typhoon had passed the day before, leaving the Seto Inland Sea surprisingly calm. Before coming here, about the only practical information I had found was that there were no shops on the island. I had just two and a half hours before the ferry headed back.
Near the pier was a map of Yashima. There were juniper trees and Yashima Shrine in the northern part of the island, but reaching them would mean climbing over a 142-meter hill and descending the other side. With so little time, I decided instead to walk to Jokeiji Temple, which stands on higher ground at the edge of the village.
The settlement was small. There were houses, but very few looked as though anyone still lived in them. The lanes were narrow but paved with concrete, and after walking uphill through the village, I reached the temple.
A Chance Meeting at the Temple
I looked inside the main hall and happened to make eye contact with a woman who was there. After I greeted her, she invited me in.
She was the mother of the temple priest.
“You came all the way from Tokyo?”
She seemed genuinely surprised. I explained that Yashima was not my only destination—I was staying on Iwaishima that night, and the ferry schedule had given me a chance to stop here along the way.
Her husband, who had been the priest, had passed away. Their son had succeeded him but was now at a temple in Osaka, while her younger son lived in the town of Yanai. She therefore lived alone on Yashima, looking after the temple.
Yet she did not consider life here particularly inconvenient.
“The newspaper is delivered here every morning.”
Her two sons send her anything she needs, and something sent from Yanai can even arrive the same day. What might look like an extremely inconvenient place from the outside did not necessarily feel that way to someone actually living here.
“There Were About 600 People When I Came Here”
I asked how many people now lived on Yashima.
“Ten,” she said.
Later, a crew member on the ferry told me there were nine. Official figures for April 2025 put the registered population at 17, while the 2015 census recorded 28. The exact number varies depending on the source and how residents are counted, but one thing is clear: very few people remain.
Then she said something that completely changed the scale of the village I had just walked through.
“There were about 600 people here when I came to the island.”
Yashima Elementary School closed in 1988, meaning its last pupils would have been roughly my age. The junior high school had closed even earlier, in 1969, after which students had to travel by boat to school outside the island.
Fishing has almost disappeared as an occupation. I saw only two small fishing boats in the harbor. The last shop on the island closed the previous year after its owner died.
“There used to be several shops.”
There is still a post office, although its employee commutes to the island by ferry from Kaminoseki every day.
The island was once busy enough to have four inns, serving visitors who came for swimming in the sea.
“There used to be work helping at the inns, cooking and cleaning.”
Standing in the almost silent village today, it is difficult to imagine four inns operating here at the same time.
From Yashima to Hawaii
Our conversation about visitors led unexpectedly to Hawaii.
During the Meiji era, from the late 19th into the early 20th century, many people from Yashima emigrated to Hawaii. This was connected to the much larger history of migration from nearby Suo-Oshima, one of the major sources of early Japanese immigrants to Hawaii.
For decades afterward, people who had emigrated—or their descendants—would sometimes return to Yashima.
“They brought coffee beans and flower leis as souvenirs. But once it gets to the third generation, they don’t come anymore. If you haven’t heard the stories directly from the first generation, you probably don’t really feel any connection to the place.”
The quiet island in the Seto Inland Sea had once been connected, through the movement of its people, to islands thousands of kilometers away in the Pacific.
Everyone Cut the Carrots the Same Way
“Oh, I’ve kept you talking without even offering you anything. Have some barley tea and take a rest.”
She brought out cold tea, and we continued talking.
Her son, the priest, had graduated from Ryukoku University and often called her. The temple’s parishioners were now scattered across Yanai, Hiroshima, Osaka, the Kanto region and elsewhere.
The temple’s gatherings had changed as the island’s population declined.
“Fewer and fewer people come to the events. We all used to cook together, but now people bring things they’ve bought.”
Fish, however, had once been so plentiful that nobody needed to buy it.
“Every morning, fishermen and temple families would give us so much fish. Sometimes I’d think, ‘We can’t possibly eat fish all the time.’”
I asked whether Yashima had any particular local dish.
She thought for a moment.
“I don’t know if I’d call anything a local specialty. But when I married and came here, I cooked together with the other women on the island, and every single one of them cooked in exactly the same way. They even cut the carrots exactly the same way. That surprised me. I realized this was how everyone learned to cook.”
There was no need for a famous dish with a name attached to it. The way a carrot was cut could itself carry a piece of the island’s culture.
Women married into the community, cooked alongside those who had been there before them, and learned the same methods. The knowledge was passed from one person to another simply by preparing meals together.
When the people disappear, those small, unnamed traditions can disappear with them.
Where Houses Once Stood, There Is Now Forest
Cool air came through the open shoji screens of the temple hall.
“We had all the storm shutters closed yesterday because of the typhoon. I’ve just opened everything up to air the place out.”
The sliding doors inside the hall were decorated with a white-chalk landscape painted by Kenji Kawaguchi, an artist from Yashima. The scene was based on the view from the temple itself.
Looking outside, she pointed toward the greenery below.
“There wasn’t a forest below the temple in the old days. Houses stood all along there. Nobody is left to cut the grass anymore, so everything has turned green.”
It was a bright summer landscape.
But some of that greenery was not untouched nature. It had grown over places where people once lived.
The temple bell also carried traces of the island’s history. The original bell was taken away during the wartime collection of metal, and for many years the temple had only a much smaller bell. The present bell was eventually made after donations were collected from supporters.
Twenty Minutes Before the Ferry
The two and a half hours passed quickly.With only about 20 minutes remaining before the ferry, I went fishing from the breakwater beside the pier. The water was so clear that I could see the seabed roughly ten meters below.
I had no bait.There were, however, a few grains of rice stuck to the lid of a bento box I had eaten in Kaminoseki. I put one on the hook and dropped it into the water.Almost immediately, I caught two fish, each around 20 centimeters long. Perhaps even anglers rarely come here.
Then the ferry arrived.
Once again, we were the only passengers.
Two and a Half Hours on Yashima
I had spent only two and a half hours on Yashima, and much of that time had been sitting inside a temple talking to one woman. In that sense, I had hardly “sightseen” at all.
But through her memories, the almost empty village outside began to look different.
There had once been around 600 residents. Children went to school here. Several shops served the community. Four inns accommodated summer visitors. Fishermen brought so much fish to the temple that there was no need to buy any. Women gathered to cook together and, without consulting a recipe, even cut their carrots in the same way. People left this small island for Hawaii, and some of them returned decades later carrying coffee beans and flower leis.
Today, fewer than 10 people remain.
When an island loses its population, it is not simply a number on a census becoming smaller. Shops disappear, schools close, religious gatherings change, houses become forest, and everyday knowledge that was never written down can vanish with the people who carried it.
I came to Yashima because the ferry timetable happened to give me two and a half hours there.What I found was not something marked on the island map.