Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
meter). 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 is-
land 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 off-
shore, 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 school-
children, 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 school-
children's history topics. Not until 20 years ater 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 Decem-
ber 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.
