is an island (or more precisely, peninsula) in the

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, i ...

just off the coast of the town of Esashi, Hokkaidō, Japan. The island serves as a breakwater for the Esashi port. It has several historical sites and is protected as a part of the

Hiyama Prefectural Natural Park is a Prefectural Natural Park in southwest Hokkaidō, Japan. Established in 1960, the park spans the municipalities of Esashi, Kaminokuni, Okushiri, Otobe, Setana, and Yakumo. Notable islands within the park include Okushiri Island and K ...

. Every July, there is a two-day festival that attracts tourists to the island. People visit the island throughout the year for swimming, camping, fishing and other recreational activities.

Geography

Kamome Island is part of the coastal terrace, being mostly flat. It rises just above sea level. The island has a width of about , a length of about and a coastline of . It is connected with the mainland by a long sandbank and thus is accessible by road. As the island stretches roughly from north to south and the mainland lies to the east, the island naturally serves as a coastal protection from sea waves. An additional wave breaker line was built to extend this protection to the north. However, the western coast of the island is severely eroded by the waves.かもめ島
Esashi Town Guide (in Japanese)

History

The island once served as a natural port for

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characte ...

ships trading with Hokkaidō or for fishermen seeking to catch

Pacific Herring The Pacific herring (''Clupea pallasii'') is a species of the herring family associated with the Pacific Ocean environment of North America and northeast Asia. It is a silvery fish with unspined fins and a deeply forked caudal fin. The distribut ...

. The herring fishery is also reflected in the legend of the Heishi rock. This 500-year-old legend says that once when herring vanished, an old woman (a fortune teller) was given a bottle with magic liquid. She threw the bottle into the sea and the herring returned. The bottle stuck to the seabed and turned into a rock, which became a representation of the god of the Sea of Japan. In 1615, a group of merchants raised a shrine on the island to honor the god of the Sea of Japan, and in 1868 it was renamed into Itsukushima Shrine. In 1814, a monument to Matsuo Bashō, the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan, was installed near the shrine. For a long time, the island had problems with fresh water, which was important for passing ships to replenish their supplies. So, in 1876, a merchant from Esashi named Murakami spent a significant amount of money to build a water well on the island. Around that time, the island was also dragged into conflicts between different Japanese clans, and in 1852, two cannons were brought to the island for protecting it and the Esashi city.

Name

The elongated shape of the island resembles a seagull, which is the basis of its name, ''Kamome'', which means "seagull". During the

, it was called . Many Japanese islands formerly shared this name, after the

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

goddess

Saraswati Saraswati ( sa, सरस्वती, ) is the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, art, speech, wisdom, and learning. She is one of the Tridevi, along with the goddesses Lakshmi and Parvati. The earliest known mention of Saraswati as a g ...

, known as in

Japanese Buddhism Buddhism has been practiced in Japan since about the 6th century CE. Japanese Buddhism () created many new Buddhist schools, and some schools are original to Japan and some are derived from Chinese Buddhist schools. Japanese Buddhism has had ...

and

Shinto Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shintois ...

, because she has traditionally been worshipped as a goddess of water and guardian of fishermen.

Flora and fauna

A constant west wind keeps the island largely grass-covered, but it is also home to Painted Maple and

Mongolian Oak ''Quercus mongolica'', commonly known as Mongolian oak, is a species of oak native to Japan, China, Korea, Mongolia, and Siberia. The species can grow to be tall. The flavono-ellagitannin The Flavono-ellagitannins or complex tannins are a cla ...

. The waters around the island are rich in aquafauna, namely Arabesque greenling and

righteye flounder Pleuronectidae, also known as righteye flounders, are a family of flounders. They are called "righteye flounders" because most species lie on the sea bottom on their left sides, with both eyes on their right sides. The Paralichthyidae are the op ...

in spring, ''Hexagrammos otakii'' (a Japanese species of greenling) in summer, mackerel and

Japanese amberjack The Japanese amberjack or yellowtail, ''Seriola quinqueradiata'', is a species of jack fish in the family Carangidae. It is native to the northwest Pacific Ocean, ranging from China (called ), Korea (called ), and Japan to Hawaii. It is greatly ...

in autumn, and Arabesque greenling and octopus in winter.

Human uses

The island is a tourist destination with fishing and hiking all through the year. The beaches are used for swimming in summer.

Religious uses

The first weekend of July, the Kamome Island Matsuri, pays tribute to the legend of Heishi Rock. A group of young men receive a blessing at a local

shrine A shrine ( la, scrinium "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred or holy space dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, daemon, or similar figure of respect, wherein they ...

. They then proceed to swim to the rock, dressed only in the traditional ''

fundoshi is a traditional Japanese undergarment for adult males and females, made from a length of cotton. Before World War II, the was the main form of underwear for Japanese men and women. However, it fell out of use quickly after the war with the ...

'', climb on top, and renew the 30-metre '' shimenawa'' that embraces the rock. The ritual rope weighs some .Kamome Island Festival Program
(in Japanese)Kevin Nut
Place, time, and being in Japanese architecture
Routledge, 2004 p. 63 The festival lasts two days it focuses on the changing of the rope, but also includes a rowing competition, a parade of people dressed in traditional costumes,

Taiko are a broad range of Japanese percussion instruments. In Japanese, the term refers to any kind of drum, but outside Japan, it is used specifically to refer to any of the various Japanese drums called and to the form of ensemble drumming ...

and singing performances, and a

karaoke Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music i ...

contest.

References

External links

{{Commons category, Kamome Island (Hiyama)
Images of the rope renewal festival
Islands of Hokkaido