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Kirishima Kinkowan NP, Miyazaki
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About 4,600 years ago, Kirishima’s largest known explosive eruption blasted out Miike’s crater. The lake now fills that bowl, enclosed by steep rim walls and reaching about 100 m deep.
A late-Edo guidebook preserves a local legend: while the Heian monk Shōkū prayed at a cave by Miike, a nine-headed dragon appeared and offered him a sacred jewel.
The 115-hectare forest around Lake Miike is one of Japan’s 4 nationally designated Wild Bird Forests. It has records of 151 bird species, and over 1,000 ducks winter in the area.
One inlet is called Prince’s Harbor (皇子港). Local tradition says the young Emperor Jimmu played by the water here, keeping a mythic childhood story attached to the lakeshore.
Miike’s bird forest has a ring-cupped oak listed among Japan’s “Forest Giants 100.” The town’s tree register gives this giant a height of 38 m.
The forest floor hides the amihikaritake, a bioluminescent mushroom whose Miyazaki strain glows faintly, and usuki-kinugasatake, wrapped in a vivid yellow, net-like veil.
At a 2014 fishing tournament, anglers removed 50 largemouth bass and 657 bluegill—37.9 kg in all—to help protect native ayu and wakasagi in Lake Miike.
