ArticleKey #27: Animal Islands

No man is an island (at least, if we are to believe John Donne) but some countries definitely are, and Japan is one of them. It's even an archipelago (literally, “chief sea”) : a super-island consisting of many smaller ones. Its four major islands are big enough to give a mainland feel - most, if not all, megalopolises are connected by train tracks and highways - but the rest of them are a very different kettle of fish. One can hardly visit them casually, as it takes a boat to go there - and boats operate on strict schedules. To complicate things even more, there are literally few of them, and far between: about 3-4 departures a day. Miss the last of them on your way back, and the prospects for the evening become quite watery! On some occasions, even getting to the boat is time-consuming: for instance, Hiroshima port is located on the outskirts of the city, and it takes about 45 minutes by streetcar to get there from the city centre. In other words, a visit to a typical island requires some careful planning, and one would need a pretty good reason to go to the trouble. When it comes to Miyajima, the floating gate is the most immediate and obvious reason but…it's not the only one, as the above picture might imply.   

The Strolling Bambi is not a random stray or some other kind of an one-off aberration. Deer don't come too close to the shrine (the reasons must be practical rather than ideological, as they are likely to disapprove of wet sand, not Shintoism!) but, otherwise, they are everywhere on Miyajima. They appreciate their solitude

 but they don't mind people, either - and pictures like that

are very much commonplace around the island. But for the shrine, Miyajima would've probably been nicknamed “Deer Island”. 

Aoshima Island near Fukuoka has no such dilemma. Its shrine is simple and charming but there is nothing really unusual about it - so, it doesn't prevent the place from being nicknamed (actually, almost officially named!) after its main inhabitants - Cat Island. Numbers vary widely but it seems like a typical Aoshima family consists of a “father”, a “mother” and… a cat! The following picture is a perfect representation of the ratio

while others focus on the interspecies relationship

or just cats' daily routine

As it turns out, there are multiple islands in Japan that are named after animals - dogs, rabbits, foxes… Immanuel Kant believed that “we can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals”. Mahatma Gandhi went even farther, as he concluded that “the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”. Japan has passed the test with flying colours!