ABOUT HACHIJŌ ISLAND
LOCATION & GEOGRAPHY
Hachijō Island (Hachijō-jima , 八丈島) is located 287 kilometres (178 miles south of the south of the special wards of Tōkyō, to which it is rattached, in the Pacific Ocean’s Philippine Sea.
The island itself is part of the Izu archipelago, a series of more than a dozen islands and islets (9 of which are inhabited) starting off the coast of the Izu Peninsula.
Hachijō itself is about 200 kilometres (120 miles) south of the tip of the Izu Peninsula and is also part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park.
From a geographical point of view, is also part of the Nanpō Islands, which comprises the islands of the Izu and Ogasawara archipelagos. In recent years, the islands of the Nanpō archipelago, all administered by the Tōkyō Metropolis, have been given the name Tokyo Islands, or Tokyo 11 Islands, for promotional purposes
The islands of the Izu Archipelago are a chain of oceanic islands formed relatively recently (within a few million years) due to volcanic activity, and without any connection to the islands of mainland Japan.
The Izu Islands are part of the northern section of the Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc (IBM) a voclanic arc which extends from Mount Fuji on the Honshū mainland, through Izu Peninsula and down through the Izu, Ogasawara and Mariana Islands, ending 2800km south of Tōkyō.
Image source: visibleearth.nasa.gov
Where is Hachijō Island?
Hachijō is a basaltic volcanic island, of oblong shape stretching in a south-north direction. It has a periphery of 62.52 km2 (24.14 sq mi), with a length of 14 km (8.7 mi) and a width of 7.5 km (4.66 mi), with 58.91 km (36.605 mi) of coastline.
The island is formed from two stratovolcanoes which skirt the island’s coastline.
One of these, Mt. Nishi Yama (Hachijō Fuji), is rated as a Class-C active volcano by the Japan Meteorological Agency and still seismically active, but its latest eruptions with outflow of lava and volcanic ash was in 1606.
To the north of the island we find its highest elevation, Mt. Nishi Yama (Hachijō Fuji ) is at 854.3m (2802.8 ft), which is the highest peak of all the Izu Islands.
To the south, the island’s second volcanic peak, Mt. Higashi-yama (Mihara-Yama) has a height of 701 metres (2,300 ft).
Most of Hachijō’s coastline consists of drop-offs and rocky shorelines that generally plunge sharply to the sea bottom
The island’s current population is roughly 7,500 residents, including team Arabesque!
CLIMATE
Hachijō-jima has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa) with rather warm summers and mild winters, though powerful winds can contribute to a strong wind-chill factor.
The average annual temperature in Hachijō is 19.9 °C (67.8 °F), and the warmest time of year is generally mid August where highs are regularly around 30°C (86°F) with temperatures rarely dropping below 25°C (76.6°F) at night.
The island experiences abundant precipitations throughout the year, with roughly 2237 mm (88.1 inch) annually, which gives rise to a flourishing natural environment.
Rainfall is somewhat less frequent in August, the driest month, and winter.
Because of the island’s location, directly across the northern Kuroshio Warm Current, the main factor influencing sea conditions in the area is the direction and positioning of the Kuroshio Current, and the movement of cold water masses.
The average monthly surface water temperature in Hachijō ranges between 18 ̊C and 29 ̊C, but surface water temperature can decrease briefly to 14 ̊C in February and even 23 ̊C in August when a cold water mass reaches the shore, due to a complex upwelling phenomenon linked to the strength and orientation of the Kuroshio Warm Current.
Waves and swell and water movements are also strongly influenced by monsoons and typhoons.
Average temperatures are as follows:
HISTORY
Hachijō-jima has been inhabited since at least the Jōmon period (14,000 – 300 BCE) with the oldest artifacts of human activites found on the island dating back to at least 6500 years ago.
It is not known how the first inhabitants managed to cross the Kuroshio, either drifting up the current most likely on wooden canoes, or making use of changes of directions of the current which is thought to have sometimes passed south of Hachijō at certain periods.
One of the theories is that these early settlers were motivated by shell collection, especially the shell of a Patellidae molusc known locally a Ōtsutanoha, which was used for making ornaments that played an important economic role during Jōmon period, and was probably the major product of the Izu islands.
In the early Nara period, Hachijō was part of Suruga Province, but was transferred to Izu Province when Izu separated from Suruga in 680. During the Heian period, Minamoto no Tametomo was banished to another Izu islamd, Izu Ōshima, after a failed rebellion, but a legendary story has him escapin to Hachijō-jima, where he is is said to have attempted to establish an independent kingdom.
The island first came under full control of the mainland in 1186, and was originally classified as a part of the Sagami Province (present Kanagawa Prefecture).
At the end of Kamakura period (1185-1333) the island was under the influence of the Kamakura shogunate.
The first permanent placement of government officials occurred in 1338 when two envoys, Okuyama Iga and Kikuchi Jigoro, were dispatched to the island (Okuyama and Kikuchi are among the top five most common family names on the island to this day…).
A powerful weaving culture developped at this period, since locally produced kihachijo high-quality silk products were in high demand on the mainland.
In the early Nara period, Hachijō was part of Suruga Province, but was transferred to Izu Province when Izu separated from Suruga in 680. During the Heian period, Minamoto no Tametomo was banished to another Izu islamd, Izu Ōshima, after a failed rebellion, but a legendary story has him escapin to Hachijō-jima, where he is is said to have attempted to establish an independent kingdom.
Ki-hachijo
In the early Nara period, Hachijō was part of Suruga Province, but was transferred to Izu Province when Izu separated from Suruga in 680. During the Heian period, Minamoto no Tametomo was banished to another Izu islamd, Izu Ōshima, after a failed rebellion, but a legendary story has him escapin to Hachijō-jima, where he is is said to have attempted to establish an independent kingdom.
The island first came under full control of the mainland in 1186, and was originally classified as a part of the Sagami Province (present Kanagawa Prefecture).
At the end of Kamakura period (1185-1333) the island was under the influence of the Kamakura shogunate.
The first permanent placement of government officials occurred in 1338 when two envoys, Okuyama Iga and Kikuchi Jigoro, were dispatched to the island (Okuyama and Kikuchi are among the top five most common family names on the island to this day…).
A powerful weaving culture developped at this period, since locally produced kihachijo high-quality silk products were in high demand on the mainland.
During the Edo period (1603-1868) Hachijojima became under the direct control of the Tokugawa shogunate.
The islanders paid tax in kihachijo silk, crossing the powerful Kuroshio Current to go to Edo, with ships sailing only twice a year: once in spring, and once in autumn.
← Closeup of a mid-19th century French map
Caption reads: islands used for banishement
In 1606, daimyo Ukita Hideie, on the losing side of the battle of Sekigahara which consolidated Tokugawa rule, was exiled to Hachijō-jima which marked the beginning of the use of the island as a place of banishment.
Originally the island was used for exile of political figures only, but from 1704 onwards criteria for banishment were broadened to cover common crimes such asmurder, theft, arson, brawling, gambling, fraud, jailbreak, rape, and membership of an outlawed religious group. In roughly 260 years, more than 1800 people were exiled to the island.
The banished convicts (called 流人 runin in Japanese) exiled to the Hachijō were never told the length of their sentences, and their place of living was decided by a lottery upon arrival.
They were told to live as they pleased, but were forbidden to marry. This means that there was a great variety of exile lifestyles on the island, some depending on the support from the mainland; others were doing unskilled labout or actively contributing to islanders’ livelihood through sharing of knowledge and technology.
Exiles are said to have introduced sweet potatoes cultivation, various educational endeavours, new silk weaving technologies and distilled liquor (shōchū) production to the island, and more.
The convict exiles also built the island’s characteristic tamaishigaki, walls of rounded stones built during the Edo period.
Life on Hachijō was far from easy, since the islanders and exiles were subjected to a number of natural disasters, plagues and recurrent famines throughout the years.
Famine crises were only solved by the introduction of sweet-potato agriculture.
And the history of Hachijō is also filled with foiled escape attempts, many having failed due to the powerful barrier of the Kuroshio current…
Its use as an island of banishement ended with the Meiji Restoration: after a general amnesty in 1868 most of the island’s residents chose to move to the mainland.
During World War II, especially after the fall of Saipan, Hachijō was seen as a strategic point in the defense of the ocean approaches to the mainland and Tōkyō, and the island saw the arrival of over 16,000 soldiers, and the construction of a network of bunkers and fortifications in 1944, remains of which can still be seen today near Sokodo beach, or by the Osaka tunnel obversatory.
In the final stages of the war, a secret base of operations for the Kaiten suicide submarines / manned torpedoes was established on the southern coast – remains of which can be seen in two places on the island – but the war ended with the devices being put to use, and without any fighting (not even a single bomb dropped…) on the island.
After the war, Hachijō was marketed as tropical getaway, easily reachable by ferry and by the newly introduced air route. The island was nicknamed the Hawaii of Japan (at a time when Okinawa was under direct U.S control) and the number of tourists went from around 10,000 in 1960, to around 50,000 in 1965, and reaching a peak in 1973 with 213,932 visitors.
It was during this tourism-boom that now-abandoned hotels such as the Hachijo Royal Hotel, the Hachijo Kokusai Hotel, and the Hachijo Onsen Hotel flourished on the island.
Hachijō Island also played a major role as a hub in the world’s transpacific communication network.
A submarine telegraph cable first connected the island to the mainland in 1906, after which subsequent submarine telecommunications went up to Ogasawara, then Guam, before crossing the Pacific towards Hawaii.
Nowadays, Hachijō island is a major communication hub, through which transit optical fiber communications cables linking the Americas to Japan, and Asia.
The island is also a pioneer of geothermic energy, and hosts a Museum of Geothermic Energy
ISLAND CULTURE
Due to the relative isolation imposed by the island’s distance from the mainland, and the natural barrier formed by the Kuroshio Current, Hachijō had, until recent years, a rather unique and distinct culture, with aspects rarely found elswhere on mainland Japan.
The island attracted the attention of early folklorists then social-anthropologists, who documented certain practices found on the island from the Edo Period onwards.
The island was famous for its somewhat “exotic” bridal practices (even though were actually found elswhere around Japan: night games of young people (yo-asobi 夜遊び), night-time visits to a girl (yobai 夜這い), visiting hsuband practices (tsuma doi 妻問い) and, which is indeed less frequent in other areas of Japan, bride abduction (yome katsugi 嫁担 ぎ).
Furthermore, because of its complex history, the island also stands out by other aspects, among which:
- Hachijō’s sericulture and kihachijo silk products
- the shape of the island’s traditional grain storehouses (kura), very similar to models found in Austranesian contexts
- the introduction of cattle to try to make use of its mountainous landscape at the start of the Meiji period, small farms persisting to this day
- Hachijō’s food, including the Izu staple dried fermented fish (kusaya), shimazushi and ashitaba leaf (Angelica keiskei) products
- the agricultural history of the island with the introduction of potatoes, both sweet and plain, which lead to shōchū distillation, and also other characteristic products such as pygmy date palm cultivation
- aspects specifically linked to the island’s history as a place of banishment, which include the round stone wall built by convicts (tama ishigaki) a traditional feast prepared for pardoned exiles about to leave the island, and a annual festival for the exiles, runin matsuri, which took place in August until the 1980s.
Another interesting cultural aspect is the island’s outrigger fishing boats ( with a lateral support floats attached to the main hull), which range from small canoes to proper fishing boats.
This somewhat exotic tradition was actually brought over from the Ogasawara/Bonin islands, where they had in turn been brought over by Polynesian (mostly from Hawaii and the Caroline Islands) settlers in the 1830s, when the islands were a British possession.
Human mobility and history has created strong cultural and links between the Ogasawara Islands and the southern Izu Islands, as well as with Okinawa – the first settlers in the Daitō Islands were a group of pioneers that came from Hachijō in 1900.
Similarly another aspect to mention are the omnipresent gyosan rubber sandals, a recent tradition also shared with the Ogasawara and Okinawa islands, loved by fishermen, surfers and scuba divers for their robust, non-slip sole.
The Hachijojima Island History and Folklore Museum is a great place to learn more about the island’s history and culture.
HACHIJŌ LANGUAGE
And yet one of the most specific cultural aspects of the island is the Hachijō language, now endangered, which is quite unique in the spectrum of dialects and actual languages (including the Ryū-Kyū languages) spoken on Japanese islands.
What is certain is that the traditional language of Hachijō-shima and Aogashima are not dialects, but actual languages.
The Hachijō language is something of a mystery, but the classification of this moribund tongue is crucial to the understanding of the evolution languages in the Japanese archipelago.
They are currently under study by specialised linguists such as Thomas Pellard, Alexander Vovin and David Ianunci
It is a complex subject, but the main hypotheses are as follows:
- the Hachijō language is the most divergent form of Japanese, related to Eastern Old Japanese and retaining several unique grammatical and phonetic aspects found in 8th century poems in Eastern dialects, along with lexical similarities with the dialects of Kyūshū and Ryukyuan languages
2. the Hachijō language is an actual branch of Japonic (alongside mainland Japanese, Northern Ryukyuan, and Southern Ryukyuan), which makes it of crucial importance to understanding to the makeup of this language family.
Hachijō is a dying out fast, with a restricted and dwindling population of primarily elderly speakers, and no real fluency.
The town of Hachijō is making a limited efforts to educate younger generations about the language through primary school classes, a special karuta game set, and Hachijō-language theater productions, as well as initiatives such as the island word of the day.
Nevertheless, there are only a few hundred speakers left, of variable proficiency and younger generations are not showing much interest in preserving this language.
ISLAND HIGHLIGHTS & ACTIVITIES
Hachijō Island is a nature lover’s paradise.
Beyond the beautiful ocean, which you can explore while diving and snorkeling with us, there are plenty of land-based activities (renting a car is highly recommended to get around)
Here is a small overview of the activities that Hachijō island has to offer on your non-diving days.
An epic climb up the 1280 steps to the top of Mt. Hachijō-Fuji (Mt. Nishi), the highest peak of the Izu islands, standing at a height of 854 meters.
On the way, make sure to stop at the Fureai farm, remnant of Hachijō’s bovine adventures of the early 20th century, offering magnificent views over the island.
Hiking trails of lush Mt. Mihara (Mt. Higashi), on which you can see the emerald-green Ionuma pond, the Karataki and Urami-ga-taki waterfalls, and the pot-hole, a waterway flowing through rocks.
Other highlights include a guided hike in the spectacular Heigo fern rainforest, and, at night, fireflies and biolumiescent mushrooms guided walks.
The island has great viewpoints offering dramatic sunsets on neighbouring Hachijō Kojima and, on clear nights, great stargazing areas. Recommended areas including the gorgeous Nanbara Senjō Jiki shoreline, and the Ōsaka Tunnel Observation Deck and the Noboriryū Toge viewpoint.
Hachijō island also has great volcanic hotsprings, including scenic outdoor ones such the Miharashi-no-yu bath with great views on the sea and Uramigataki ” jungle” mixed onsen (wear a swimsuit), and others, perfect to relax after a hard day’s diving.
Museums you should not miss are the Hachijō-jima History and Folk Museum, along with the Geothermal History Museum (temporarily closed), and history buffs will also appreciate the vague remains of the Japanese Imperial Army bunkers and kaiten suicide-submarine bases, near Sokodo for instance.
Finally, on the food-side, local highlights include kusaya (fermented dried fish), shimazushi sushi, ashitaba leaf products, locally produced shiitake mushrooms, milk and passionfruits, not to forget the local hooch, shima-shōchū
Check out the following websites for more English-language information on Hachijō Island’s nature, highlights and activities:
Wildlife of Hachijojima Island
Hachijo Island
BlueJapan.org pages on diving in Japan
