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Sanriku Fukkō NP, Miyagi
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After the 2011 tsunami swept away oyster rafts and fishing gear, locals launched “Nyanko the Project” to restart oyster farming and support cats. They reached a fundraising target expected to take 3 years in just 3 months.
Island tradition says a cat was killed by a falling rock being broken for a fishing-net anchor. The fishery’s head buried it and built a shrine; people prayed there for cats’ safety and good catches.
Cats had two old jobs here: protecting silkworm cocoons from mice and, fishermen reportedly believed, signaling weather and catch through their behavior. Those everyday ties helped establish cats as island guardians.
At the peak of Tashirojima’s large fixed-net fishery, 7 net operations were running. From the late 1500s, crew lodgings on the west shore drew workers from nearby communities, until a 1952 fisheries reform.
At Nitaoda Shell Mound, a prefectural historic site, excavators found abalone and turban shells alongside bone fishing gear, including anchor-shaped hooks and harpoons. Finds span the Jōmon period, chiefly its later Middle phase.
At Manga Island, cartooning is built right into the landscape: 5 cat-shaped lodges were designed by manga artists including Tetsuya Chiba and Machiko Satonaka, with original cat drawings decorating their interiors.
The 2011 tsunami swept away Tashirojima’s lion-dance handbook and video, but the island’s preservation society recreated both and shared them with schools—turning disaster recovery into a way to pass tradition on.
Local tradition links a stone mooring post at Ōdomari to the San Juan Bautista, said to have taken on water there before sailing with Date Masamune’s embassy in 1613.
Though it lies in Tōhoku, Tashirojima’s monthly mean temperature stays above 0°C even in the coldest winter months. Its evergreen woodland shelters ferns at their northern range limits, including species found nowhere else in Miyagi.
