is one of the

Tokara Islands The is an archipelago in the Nansei Islands, and are part of the Satsunan Islands, which is in turn part of the Ryukyu Archipelago. The chain consists of twelve small islands located between Yakushima and Amami-Oshima. The islands have a total ...

, belonging to

Kagoshima Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands. Kagoshima Prefecture has a population of 1,527,019 (1 February 2025) and has a geographic area of 9,187 Square kilometre, km2 (3,547 Square m ...

. The island covers 27.66 km² in area and has a population of 48 people. Although the island has an airport, there are no regularly scheduled services, and access is normally by ferry to the city of Kagoshima on the mainland. The island is about nine hours by boat from the mainland. The islanders are dependent mainly on agriculture, fishing and seasonal tourism.

Geography

Suwanosejima is the second largest of the islands in the Tokara archipelago, and is located southwest from Nakanoshima. The highest elevation is , with a height of above sea level, which is the exposed cone of an active

stratovolcano A stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, is a typically conical volcano built up by many alternating layers (strata) of hardened lava and tephra. Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes are characterized by a steep profile with ...

arising from the ocean floor. The local climate is classified as subtropical, with a rainy season from May through September.

History

Suwanosejima has been populated sporadically (depending on volcanic activity), for several thousand years. The island was once part of the

Ryukyu Kingdom The Ryukyu Kingdom was a kingdom in the Ryukyu Islands from 1429 to 1879. It was ruled as a Tributary system of China, tributary state of Ming dynasty, imperial Ming China by the King of Ryukyu, Ryukyuan monarchy, who unified Okinawa Island t ...

. During 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 ...

, Suwanosejima was part of

Satsuma Domain The , briefly known as the , was a Han system, domain (''han'') of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1871. The Satsuma Domain was based at Kagoshima Castle in Satsuma Province, the core of the modern city of ...

and was administered as part of Kawanabe District. In 1896, the island was transferred to the administrative control of Ōshima District, Kagoshima, and from 1911 was administered as part of the village of Toshima, Kagoshima. From 1946-1952, the island was administered by the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

as part of the Provisional Government of Northern Ryukyu Islands. It is the home of Buzoku, also called the Banyan Ashram, a commune founded in the 1960s by Sansei Yamao, Nanao Sakaki, and others, and home for a while to American poet and scholar

Gary Snyder Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. His early poetry has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance and he has been described as the "poet laureate ...

Eruptions

Suwanosejima was abandoned after a great 15th century eruption, until it was resettled by people of the

Amami Islands The The name ''Amami-guntō'' was standardized on February 15, 2010. Prior to that, another name, ''Amami shotō'' (奄美諸島), was also used. is a Japanese archipelago in the Satsunan Islands, which is part of the Ryukyu Islands, and is sout ...

in the 19th century.Snyder 1999, pg. 63 After large-scale Plinian eruptions from 1813-1814, which ejected a large amount of

scoria Scoria or cinder is a pyroclastic, highly vesicular, dark-colored volcanic rock formed by ejection from a volcano as a molten blob and cooled in the air to form discrete grains called clasts.Neuendorf, K.K.E., J.P. Mehl, Jr., and J.A. Jackso ...

and saw lava flows to the west coast, the island was abandoned by its inhabitants again until 1883. Further eruptions occurred in 1877, 1914-1915, 1921, 1922-1925, 1938, 1940, 1949, 1950-1954, 1957-1999, 2001-2002 and 2004-present. One of the most active volcanic islands in the world, Suwanosejima recorded 156 volcanic eruptions in 2008 and 216 in 2009. The most recent volcanic activity occurred on 14 January 2024, when Mount Otake erupted, expelling rocks more than a kilometer from its crater.

References

Bibliography

* National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGIA). ''Prostar Sailing Directions 2005 Japan Enroute''. Prostar Publications (2005). * Das, Bhagavan (1997). ''It's Here Now (Are You?)'' Broadway. * Halper, Jon, ed. ''Gary Snyder: Dimensions of a Life'' (1991) Sierra Club Books. * Shurtleff, William and Aoyagi, Akiko (1998). ''The Book of Tofu''. * Snyder, Gary. ''The Gary Snyder Reader'' (1999) Counterpoint.

External links