Amami Ōshima

Amami Ōshima—often shortened to Amami—is the biggest island in the Amami chain, which stretches between Kyūshū and Okinawa. It belongs to the Satsunan Islands, all part of Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. Covering 712.35 square kilometers, the island is home to roughly 73,000 people. Its administration is split among the city of Amami, the towns of Tatsugō and Setouchi, and the villages of Uken and Yamato. A large portion of the island lies inside Amami Guntō National Park. In 2021, it became part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that also includes Tokunoshima Island, the northern part of Okinawa Island, and Iriomote Island.

When people first settled Amami Ōshima is unclear. Stone tools point to occupation during the Japanese Paleolithic period, and other finds—like pottery—show steady contact with Japan’s Jōmon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods. The island appears in the ancient chronicle *Nihon Shoki* in an entry for 657 AD. During the Nara and early Heian periods, it served as a stopover for Japanese envoys traveling to the Tang court in China. Mother of pearl was a key export to Japan. From 1571 to 1611, Amami Ōshima was briefly absorbed into the Ryukyu Kingdom as it expanded north. Since Ryukyu was a tributary of Ming China, the island’s status changed accordingly.

To counter Ming influence, samurai from the Shimazu clan invaded in 1609, and the Tokugawa shogunate recognized the island as part of Shimazu territory in 1624. Shimazu rule was brutal: residents were reduced to serfdom and forced to grow sugarcane under heavy taxation, often leading to famine. In 1859, Saigō Takamori was exiled to Amami Ōshima for two years; his house is now a memorial museum. After the Meiji Restoration, the island was incorporated into Ōsumi Province and later into Kagoshima Prefecture. Following World War II, the Amami Islands—including this one—were occupied by the United States until 1953, when control returned to Japan.

Since February 1974, a 7,861-hectare area covering parts of the island and nearby sea has been protected as the Amami Gunto Quasi-national Park. The area also contains a large mangrove forest. In December 2001, a six-hour naval clash—the Battle of Amami-Ōshima—occurred between an armed North Korean spy vessel and Japanese Coast Guard ships near the island, after the spy craft entered Japan’s exclusive economic zone. The confrontation ended with the North Korean ship sinking. In 2017, the Amami Guntō National Park was established, absorbing the former quasi-national park and additional land and sea areas in neighboring municipalities.

Amami Ōshima is the seventh-largest island in the Japanese archipelago, after the four main islands, Okinawa Island, and Sado Island (excluding the disputed Kuril Islands). It lies about 380 kilometers south of Kyūshū’s southern tip and 250 kilometers north of Okinawa. Volcanic in origin, its highest point is Mount Yuwanda at 605 meters. The coast is ringed by a coral reef; the island may have hosted some of Japan’s northernmost coral reefs during the last glacial period. The East China Sea lies to the west, and the Pacific Ocean to the east.

Administratively, Amami Ōshima belongs to Kagoshima Prefecture and includes the municipalities of Amami, Tatsugo, Yamatomura, Usomura, and part of Setouchi-cho.

The island has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), with very warm summers and mild winters. Rainy season runs from May through September, and typhoons are frequent.

Amami Ōshima hosts several rare or endangered endemic animals, such as the Amami rabbit and Lidth’s jay—both now found only here and on Tokunoshima. The Amami rabbit is sometimes called a living fossil, representing an ancient Asian lineage lost elsewhere. The island also has the habu, a venomous snake common across the Ryūkyū Islands. Mongooses were introduced to control the habu but became a problem themselves, as their population growth hurt the Amami rabbit and other endemic species. After the mongoose population hit 10,000 by 2000, an eradication campaign succeeded in wiping them out by 2024. Whale watching for humpback whales has become a winter attraction. Notably, the North Pacific right whale—the most endangered whale species—has appeared around the island repeatedly (five records since 1901: three sightings, a capture, and a stranding). As of 2014, Amami is the only location in the East China Sea where this species has been confirmed in the past 110 years, and one of two places worldwide (along with the Bonin Islands) where its winter presence has been steady since the 20th century. Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins were first confirmed in Japan in the Seto Strait. Other species include Bryde’s whales, sperm whales, false killer whales, spinner dolphins, and spotted dolphins. Large whales like blue and fin were once seasonal migrants but are now gone. The island marks the northernmost limit of dugong distribution, with occasional sightings through the 20th and into the 21st century. Amami Ōshima is also the only place where a leatherback turtle nest has been observed.