The mountains of Yakushima (屋久島), a southern island of Kagoshima (鹿児島県), are home to lush forests thousands of years old. Perhaps most famous as the inspiration for the magical forests in the Ghibli hit anime Princess Mononoke, these trails criss-cross the island, drawing in travelers from around the world. These moss covered paths take several days to complete and are home to wild monkeys and deer. This is just a small sample of an afternoon of hiking we did during a visit in August 2016. To get to Yakushima you can either take a flight straight there, or take the ferry from Kagoshima, which you see at the beginning of this video.
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Yakushima (屋久島) is one of the Ōsumi Islands belonging to Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The island, 504.88 km² in area, has a population of 13,178. Access to the island is by hydrofoil ferry (7 or 8 times a day from Kagoshima, depending on the season), slow car ferry (once or twice a day from Kagoshima), or by air to Yakushima Airport (3 to 5 times daily from Kagoshima, once daily from Fukuoka and once daily from Osaka). Administratively, the whole island is the town of Yakushima. The town also serves neighbouring Kuchinoerabujima. The majority of the island is within the borders of the Kirishima-Yaku National Park.
Yakushima’s electricity is more than 50% hydroelectric, and surplus power has been used to produce hydrogen gas in an experiment by Kagoshima University. The island has been a test site for Honda’s hydrogen fuel cell vehicle research. (There are no hydrogen cars stationed on the island but electric cars are run by the municipality.)
In 1980 an area of 18,958 ha was designated a UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve. In 1993, 10 hectares of wetland at Nagata-hama was designated a Ramsar Site. It is the largest nesting ground for the endangered loggerhead sea turtle in the North Pacific. Yakushima’s unique remnant of warm/temperate ancient forest has been a natural World Heritage Site since 1993. In the Wilderness core area (12.19 square kilometres (3,010 acres)) of the World Heritage Site, no record of past tree cutting can be traced. The island is visited by 300,000 tourists every year.
Yakushima has been settled since at least the Jomon period. It is first mentioned in written documents of the Chinese Sui Dynasty of the 6th century, and in the Japanese Shoku Nihongi in an entry dated 702. It formed part of ancient Tane Province. It was often mentioned in the diaries of travellers between Tang Dynasty China and Nara period Japan. During the Edo period, Yakushima was ruled by the Shimazu clan of the Satsuma Domain and was considered part of Ōsumi Province. Following the Meiji restoration, the island has been administered as part of Kagoshima Prefecture.
Alo Japan.