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Amami Guntō NP, Kagoshima
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Yamato’s last radio message referred to Tokunoshima, so people once believed the ship sank near this cape. Its wreck was later located about 200 km off Kyushu; the memorial stands far from the actual wreck.
The 24 m memorial tower matches the height of Yamato’s bridge and is shaped like hands joined in prayer. Its full name honors the special-attack fleet with Yamato as flagship; a service is held here every April 7.
In Inutabu village, Issansan’s origin story reaches back about 400 years to a famine. A straw good-fortune figure leads children and elders door-to-door, singing for autumn mochi and a good harvest.
Nearby Inutabu Shell Midden yielded 102 dog bones—the most at any of 13 Kagoshima Jomon and Yayoi sites in one study. They were Shiba-sized, placing small dogs on Tokunoshima about 2,500–3,500 years ago.
At nearby Miyadobaru Beach, shallow pools in flat limestone naturally concentrate seawater through evaporation. Residents traditionally boiled the brine or extracted salt from seaweed; some still make cooking salt today.
Nearby Miyadobaru Beach exposes rock mélange about 100 million years old: varied fragments crushed and fused during plate collisions near the seafloor, then pushed up to the surface over time.
In 1864, more than 150 Inutabu farmers surrounded the Satsuma office to rescue a man tortured over sugar quotas. Six leaders faced 13 years in exile; descendants marked the revolt’s centenary with a memorial in 1964.
At Tokunoshima’s western tip, Inutabu Cape’s cliffs are cut from uplifted coral-reef limestone—an ancient reef raised above the sea, then sculpted by waves and wind into a rugged edge.
