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Daisen-Oki NP, Shimane
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A golden arrow from Sada Ōkami’s mother pierces the dark cave in local legend, flooding it with light and giving Kaka its name. It is said to fly on to nearby Matojima—“Target Island.”
Old Kukedo is a local Sai-no-Kawara, where tradition says children who died young gather. Tiny stone cairns stand among offerings of toys, clothes, shoes and school items, renewed as older gifts weather away.
The 733 Izumo Fudoki warns that a boat slipping past silently would summon a god’s whirlwind and capsize. In 1891, Lafcadio Hearn saw a boatwoman rap the hull with a stone before entering.
New Kukedo’s passages meet at a near right angle, creating a vast naturally lit chamber with sea openings to the east, west and north. The main tunnel runs roughly 230m through the headland.
In New Kukedo, Lafcadio Hearn described a ceiling drip as Jizō’s “Fountain of Milk.” Local belief held that children’s spirits drank there, while nursing mothers prayed for their milk to increase—or diminish.
The Izumo Fudoki places a shrine to Kisa-kahime, mother of Sada Ōkami, inside the cave. Today she is enshrined at nearby Kaga Shrine alongside Sarutahiko, carrying the cave’s sacred story into local worship.
A local tale tells of a sailor who mocked the cairns and swept them away with an oar. By morning they were rebuilt; his ship later wrecked in a storm, and he sent a Jizō statue back from Shikoku.
Kaka’s sea caves cut through rock from a volcanic landscape about 14 million years old, when this part of Shimane lay beneath the sea. Waves later exploited fractures in the ancient bedrock to hollow the passages.
