, is an inhabited island located 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, it ...

, administered as part of Sakata,

Yamagata Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. It has a population of 1,005,926 (1 February 2025) and an area of 9,325 Square kilometre, km2 (3,600 Square mile, sq mi). Its neighbours are Akita Prefectu ...

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 ...

. The island, 2.75 km² in area, had 158 inhabitants as of 2020. The island has no airport, and access is normally by ferry to the city of Sakata on the mainland. The islanders are dependent mainly on

commercial fishing Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish and other seafood for Commerce, commercial Profit (economics), profit, mostly from wild fisheries. It provides a large quantity of food to many countries around the world, but those who practice ...

and seasonal tourism.

Geography

Tobishima is approximately by . It is located west of

Honshu , historically known as , is the largest of the four main islands of Japan. It lies between the Pacific Ocean (east) and the Sea of Japan (west). It is the list of islands by area, seventh-largest island in the world, and the list of islands by ...

. The highest point is Takamori-yama ( 高森山 ) at . The island is mostly flat, with a gentle rise from the east coast to the west coast, the west coast is characterized by steep cliffs. The port facilities are therefore located on the east coast and along with most of the population. Due to the effects of the warm Tsushima current, the island has relatively mild weather year-round average annual temperatures of 12 °C; even snowfall of 10 cm is rare. The island is covered with evergreen

deciduous tree In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, after flo ...

s, including ''

Eurya japonica ''Eurya japonica'', known as East Asian eurya, is a 1–3.5 m tall shrub in the Pentaphylacaceae family. It is found in eastern China, Korea, and Japan. It is used as an ornamental plant. In shinto , also called Shintoism, is a religion o ...

.''

Important Bird Area

Tobishima serves as an important site for some 270 species of

migratory bird Bird migration is a seasonal movement of birds between breeding and wintering grounds that occurs twice a year. It is typically from north to south or from south to north. Migration is inherently risky, due to predation and mortality. Th ...

s. It, with neighbouring, and much smaller, Oshakujima, have been recognised as an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

(IBA) by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding i ...

for their

colonies A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule, which rules the territory and its indigenous peoples separated from the foreign rulers, the colonizer, and their '' metropole'' (or "mother country"). This separated rule was often or ...

black-tailed gull The black-tailed gull (''Larus crassirostris'') is a gull native to shorelines of East Asia. Description The black-tailed gull is medium-sized (46 cm) (19 Inches), with a wingspan of 126–128 cm (49.6 - 50.3 Inches). It has yellow leg ...

Climate

History

Tobishima has been populated for several thousand years, with archaeological finds from the early

Jōmon period In Japanese history, the is the time between , during which Japan was inhabited by the Jōmon people, a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united by a common culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism an ...

dated to 6000–7000 years ago. In the late

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kammu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means in Japanese. It is a ...

, the island was controlled by the

Abe clan The was one of the oldest of the major Japanese clans (''uji''); and the clan retained its prominence during the Sengoku period and the Edo period.Meyer, Eva-Maria"Gouverneure von Kyôto in der Edo-Zeit." Universität Tübingen (in German). Th ...

, followed by the

Kiyohara clan The was a powerful clan of the far north of Japan during the Heian period, descended from Prince Toneri, son of Emperor Tenmu (631–686). Kiyohara no Fusanori (9th century) had two sons: the elder was the ancestor of the samurai branch fam ...

. In the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

, it was part of the holdings of the

Sakai clan The was a Japanese clan, Japanese samurai clan that claimed descent from the Nitta clan, Nitta branch of the Minamoto clan, who were in turn descendants of Emperor Seiwa. Serata (Nitta) Arichika, a samurai of the 14th century, was the common a ...

at Shonai Domain and an occasional port for the ''

kitamaebune The was a shipping route (and also the ships involved) in Japan from the Edo period to the Meiji era. The route went from Osaka through the Seto Inland Sea and the Kanmon Straits to ports in Hokuriku region, Hokuriku on the Sea of Japan and late ...

'' coastal trading vessels. As of April 1950, the village of Tobishima and thus the island was annexed by the city of Sakata, Yamagata.

References

*National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGIA). ''Prostar Sailing Directions 2005 Japan Enroute''. Prostar Publications (2005).

External links

Official home page
{{Authority control Islands of Yamagata Prefecture Islands of the Sea of Japan Sakata, Yamagata Important Bird Areas of Japan Seabird colonies