Kurushima Kaikyo Bridge-1.jpg

is a List of islands of Japan, Japanese island in the Seto Inland Sea, Inland Sea. Municipalities of Japan, Administratively, it forms part of the Cities of Japan, city of Imabari, Ehime, Imabari, Ehime Prefecture.

Geography

Kurushima is situated some off the coast of Shikoku's at the entrance to in Imabari, Ehime, Imabari. The island has a coastline of approximately and a surface area of . It is a natural fortress with cliffs to the north shaped by the fast currents (some to ) and rocks below; there is a settlement on the flatter land to the south, around a small bay. To the east, the are spanned by the Kurushima Kaikyō Bridge, while the island is protected as part of Setonaikai National Park.

History

During the Sengoku period, the island was the base of the Kurushima Murakami, one of the three main houses of the Murakami kaizoku (the others the Noshima Murakami and Innoshima Murakami). There are still remains of the walls of , an element of Japan Heritage "Story" #036, as well as traces of residences and wells. In the Edo period, together with nearby , the island was part of in Iyo-Matsuyama Domain, Matsuyama Domain, with an Kokudaka, assessment of twenty-six ''Koku#Historic use, koku'', three ''Japanese units of measurement#Volume, to'', and nine ''Japanese units of measurement#Volume, shō''. Around the end of the Kyōhō era in the early eighteenth century there were some seventy-eight households, fifty-three of them of fishermen. By Shōwa (1926–1989), Shōwa 53 (1978) this number had dropped to thirty-nine households, primarily making a living by commuting to the local shipyards and Fishing techniques#Line fishing, line fishing. As of 2009, Kurushima had thirty-two residents.

Related maps

Series L506, U.S. Army Map Service, 1953 (NI 53-5 Hiroshima).jpg, 1953 Army Map Service, US AMS map showing Hiroshima Prefecture and, across the sea to the south, Imabari, Ehime, Imabari in Ehime Prefecture; Kurushima is the small unmarked island near the bottom, to the right of the tip of what is marked Shikoku, just above Hashihama and to the southwest of "O-shima" ("Ko-jima" on the next map)
Series L775, U.S. Army Map Service, 1946 (Kikuma Sheet 4649-2).jpg, 1946 Army Map Service, US AMS map showing "Kuru-shima", to the southwest of "Ko-jima" ("O-shima" on the previous map)

See also

* Setonaikai National Park
* Noshima
* Innoshima

References

External links

*
Japan's outlying islands
(Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, MLIT)
*
Detailed maps of Setonaikai National Park
(Ministry of the Environment (Japan), Ministry of the Environment; Kurushima is in 愛媛県地域（今治南）)

{{Authority control

Imabari, Ehime
Islands of the Seto Inland Sea
Islands of Ehime Prefecture