, or sometimes just , is an inhabited island located roughly 1.5 kilometers northeast of the city of Niihama (which it is officially a part of) in

Ehime Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Ehime Prefecture has a population of 1,334,841 and a geographic area of 5,676 km2 (2,191 sq mi). Ehime Prefecture borders Kagawa Prefecture to the northeast, Toku ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Geography

Nii Ōshima is located in the

Seto Inland Sea The , sometimes shortened to the Inland Sea, is the body of water separating Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, three of the four main islands of Japan. It serves as a waterway connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Japan. It connects to Osaka Ba ...

. It has a circumference of approximately 8 kilometers and a total area of . The island is mostly hilly, with its highest point at 146.48 meters above sea level. The northern part of the island is covered with dense forests, has many cliffs. The main settlement is in the southern part of the island. There is a ferry that runs between Nii Ōshima and Niihama approximately once every hour, taking fifteen minutes to complete a one-way journey. At one point, there was the possibility that a bridge might be built to connect Ōshima and Shikoku, but these plans are now considered unlikely. There is no public transportation on the island, but there is a road that circles the island.

History

Nii Ōshima was the birthplace of Murakami Yoshihiro (d.1374), founder of the "Murakami Navy", who ruled the Seto Inland Sea in the

Muromachi The , also known as the , is a division of History of Japan, Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Ashikaga shogunate, Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate ( or ), which was officially establ ...

and

Sengoku period The was the period in History of Japan, Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Kyōtoku incident (1454), Ōnin War (1467), or (1493) are generally chosen as th ...

. On the southern side of the island sit the remains of Ōshima Castle, which was one of the Murakami strongholds. The island became Ōshima Village in Ehime Prefecture, with the establishment of the modern municipalities system on December 15, 1889. The village was absorbed by Niihama City on May 3, 1953. Due to its rapidly aging population and its geographic isolation from Niihama and the main island of

Shikoku is the smallest of the List of islands of Japan#Main islands, four main islands of Japan. It is long and between at its widest. It has a population of 3.8 million, the least populated of Japan's four main islands. It is south of Honshu ...

, Nii Ōshima faces serious problems of rural depopulation. At the time of 1950 census, the population of the island was 1838 people. However, per Niihama City residency records, the population as of March 31, 2013, was only 280, with half the population over the age of 70. The primary occupations on the island include shrimp farming and agriculture, particularly mikan and a distinctive type of white

potato The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...

. Islands of Ehime Prefecture Dissolved municipalities of Ehime Prefecture Niihama, Ehime {{Ehime-geo-stub