(also called in Nihon Shoki) is an island on the south-west tip of

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separ ...

, Japan.

Geography

The island is irregularly shaped and hilly. The strait, as narrow as , separates the island form the main island of

. The parts of sprawling city of

Shimonoseki is a city located in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. With a population of 265,684, it is the largest city in Yamaguchi Prefecture and the fifth-largest city in the Chūgoku region. It is located at the southwestern tip of Honshu facing the Tsushim ...

occupy the most of the island, making it the most populous minor island in

Yamaguchi Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Yamaguchi Prefecture has a population of 1,377,631 (1 February 2018) and has a geographic area of 6,112 Square kilometre, km2 (2,359 Square mile, sq mi). Y ...

, albeit only sixth in size by area.

Transportation

The island is connected to the Japanese mainland of

by three bridges, one above

ship lock A lock is a device used for raising and lowering boats, ships and other watercraft between stretches of water of different levels on river and canal waterways. The distinguishing feature of a lock is a fixed chamber in which the water lev ...

Kanmon Railway Tunnel The was the first undersea tunnel in Japan. It goes underneath the Kanmon Straits, connecting the islands of Honshu and Kyushu. It is an important link in the Japanese rail network. Its construction began in 1936, and it was completed in Novem ...

connects island to

Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...

, but

San'yō Main Line The is a major railway line owned by JR Group companies in western Japan, connecting Kōbe Station and Moji Station, largely paralleling the coast of the Seto Inland Sea, Inland Sea, in other words, the southern coast of western Honshu. The Sa ...

has no stop-overs on island, nearby station being the

Shimonoseki Station is a railway station on the Sanyo Main Line, operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West) in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, Japan. Kyushu Railway Company (JR Kyushu) and Japan Freight Railway Company (JR Freight) services also use this station. The ...

in the downtown area. Also, bridge connection exist to the small on the north-western tip of the Hikoshima.

History

The island was inhabited since prehistory, as evidenced by

petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

s found in 1918. Following the

Battle of Dan-no-ura The was a major sea battle of the Genpei War, occurring at Dan-no-ura, in the Shimonoseki Strait off the southern tip of Honshū. On April 25, 1185 (or March 24, 1185 by the official page of Shimonoseki City), the fleet of the Minamoto clan ...

, the refugees from the

Taira clan The Taira was one of the four most important clans that dominated Japanese politics during the Heian, Kamakura and Muromachi Periods of Japanese history – the others being the Fujiwara, the Tachibana, and the Minamoto. The clan is divided ...

has migrated to island and set the basis for the local agriculture. The island was an important site of Shimonoseki Campaign in 1863-1864 when it was much feared the island would become the Japanese variant of

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. The island industrialization began in 1924 with the building of

ammonium sulphate Ammonium sulfate (American English and international scientific usage; ammonium sulphate in British English); (NH4)2SO4, is an inorganic salt with a number of commercial uses. The most common use is as a soil fertilizer. It contains 21% nitrogen a ...

plant with German license in 1924. Currently island is heavily populated and industrialized, including shipyard and

titanium Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

smelter.

Attractions

Fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

-rich cliffsYamaguchi travel guide - Hikojima
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Notable residents

Michiyo Kogure (31 January 1918 – 13 June 1990) was a Japanese film actress. She appeared in nearly 200 films in a career which spanned 45 years, starring in works by Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse, and others. Film histor ...

- film actress *

Shinji Yamashita is a Japanese actor who is represented by the talent agency From First Production. He graduated from Shimonoseki Commercial High School and dropped out from Chuo University's Faculty of Letters. Biography In 1975, Yamashita was admitted to the ...

- actor *

Atsushi Tamura is a famous Japanese comedian from the Hikoshima area of Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. He and his partner, , form the known as . Though the two share the same surname, there is no family relation. The pair started their career by ...

- comedian *

Shinobu Otowa is a Japanese enka singer. She was born as Chieko Yoshimura (吉村智恵子 ''Yoshimura Chieko'') in Shimonoseki is a city located in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. With a population of 265,684, it is the largest city in Yamaguchi Prefectu ...

enka is a Japanese music genre considered to resemble traditional Japanese music stylistically. Modern ''enka'', however, is a relatively recent musical form, which adopts a more traditional musical style in its vocalism than ''ryūkōka'' music, p ...

singer *

Hideo Fujimoto (also known as Hideo Nakagami) (May 10, 1918 – April 26, 1997) was a Japanese baseball pitcher. He holds the Japanese records for lowest career ERA (1.90) and seasonal ERA (0.73), as well as best all-time winning percentage (.697). During his ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

pitcher In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw ...

Masashi Nishiyama is a Japanese judoka who won a bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics. He is competing for the Nippon Steel Corporation Judo Club. Biography Nishiyama was born in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture and graduated from the Kokushikan Universi ...

judoka is an unarmed modern Japanese martial art, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally.『日本大百科全書』電子版【柔道】(CD-ROM version of Encyclopedia Nipponica, "Judo"). ...

References

External links

Hikoshima official site
{{Authority control Islands of Yamaguchi Prefecture Islands of the East China Sea