Kakeromajima Island was added to Your Favorites!
Amami Guntō NP, Kagoshima
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
At Shodon, village men wear handmade paper masks for Shibaya, a comic folk theater of dances, skits and puppetry. Local tradition credits Heike exile Taira no Sukemori with starting it; 11 of its once-20 pieces survive.
Sukomo excavations uncovered gohōra conchs, prized for bracelets in northern Kyushu, where they do not live. Archaeologists see them as evidence of exchange between Kyushu and the Ryukyus during the Yayoi–Kofun era.
At Shibaya, local women serve mikī to performers and visitors. Its name comes from ceremonial sacred sake, but it contains no alcohol: rice and sweet potato ferment into a thick, gently tangy drink.
Shodon’s bay-front deigo avenue includes trees said to be 300 years old. Local tradition says their brilliant red blossoms once marked the harbor for Ryukyuan trading vessels; the avenue is now a town natural monument.
The name Setouchi predates the modern town and was not borrowed from Japan’s Inland Sea: a 1595 document preserved in Sukomo, on Kakeroma, already writes the local name as “sentouchi” in hiragana.
At Shodon’s Ueda mill, local cane becomes unrefined brown sugar in vats fired by spent cane. The leaves feed cattle, whose manure nourishes fields—a practical island cycle that leaves little to waste.
At Kiji, villagers once shared an ishihibi—a low stone fish weir. The rising tide washed fish over its wall; when the water ebbed, fish were left in shallow enclosures to be gathered by hand, basket or net. Traces remain.
Before piped water, Shodon households shared mountain-stream sources because local wells were poor for drinking. One catchment bears a 1928 date; residents recalled children carrying water home on balance poles, sometimes 3 trips a day.
Kakeroma villages have shared central plazas called myā, with an asage for rice rites and a toneya associated with male ritual specialists. Local accounts describe narrow kamimichi—“god paths”—linking mountain slopes to the sea.
Kakeroma’s relatively unarmored shores preserve mudflats rich in local life. The Environment Ministry notes that the Amami-recorded burrowing shrimp minami-anajako is abundant here, while green turtles feed and nest in the surrounding waters.
The Oshima Strait between Kakeroma and Amami is only 2–6 km wide, yet exceeds 50 m in depth. A branch of the Kuroshio enters this sheltered sea, where inner-sea coral reefs develop near the strait’s openings.
Long before Ankyaba’s gun batteries, people used Kakeroma’s northeastern shore: excavations there found pottery estimated to be about 6,000 years old, along with artifacts from much later periods.
Construction of Ankyaba’s fort began in 1921. Beyond its gun positions, the Navy later used a listening post to monitor the strait and controlled mines laid underwater at its eastern entrance.
Shodon stood in for the island home of Lily and Tora-san in the 1995 film—the 48th and final Otoko wa Tsurai yo movie. The actual old house used onscreen still stands and was restored as a guesthouse in 2017.
At Kakeroma’s呑之浦, novelist Toshio Shimao commanded the Navy’s 18th Shinyo special-attack boat unit during World War II. He met Miho, his future wife, on the island; their meeting and wartime experiences became roots of his writing.
