Map Week #2 - Shikinejima, 1992
Comments: 4
The Kokudo Chiriin 1:25,000
A contemporary map (published 1992 — the year I first stepped foot on the island) from The National Lands Agency Geographical Survey Institute. These are the official maps, so to speak, the U.S. Geological Survey equivalents. The entire country has been mapped in all its 3-colour utilititarian glory into dozens and dozens of 46 × 36.97 cm maps. Curiously, the maps are 46.05 cm at the bottom edge. Curvature of the earth? Satellite calibration artefact? Kinokuniya has them shelved in a canyon of free-standing map cabinets running half the length of the store in their old Shinjuku building.
I’ve been to Shikine 7 times now, the last two years ago after being stranded on Oshima for 3 days in a typhoon. We got on the only boat available heading south and Oshima was as far as it would take us. When we finally made Shikine we found the island swept clean by the storm — the water was the clearest ocean I’ve ever seen. We were in that water for 10 sunlit days and saw something new every single day.
Shikine used to be part of neighbouring Niijima. It calved off and settled about 1000 m southwest in the same late-19C earthquake that took out the building over the Daibutsu in Kamakura. Fresh water has to be piped over from the mother island.
Legend has it that 42 m2 of the country remained unmapped after the Kokudo Chiriin completed the series, and people speak of a prize for the one who positively locates this area. Shikine may be home to almost 8 square metres of the missing empire (the two capes north of where the boat comes in).
Shikine is home to two of my favourite hot springs in the country. They’re completely natural, formed in rock pools right on the water’s edge. Jinata gets so hot you can cook eggs in the fissure where it starts. It’s a high tide hot spring only, too hot otherwise. Ashitsuki has been landscaped in recent years and they’ve built the baths up properly and installed outdoor showers and small changerooms. Jinata remains utterly au naturel. Jinata is at the bottom of a deep cut valley down to the water and the rocks surrounding it — a salty ocean-going granite — have been carved by parties visiting over the years. ••• Kokudo Chirin –> Kokudo Chiriin This certainly falls into the small world category: 1992 was the year I got married and Shikinejima was our honeymoon destination. The pine tree now living on my balcony, was just a slip of a thing when I carefully extracted it from its bit of loam in a crack of a rock beside the path leading down to Jinata…. Kelly — Oops and thanks. Duly corrected above. As for honeymooning on Shikene, I can't think of anything more romantic. It's great down there in the winter, too. You get to stand on the rocks and huddle into each other. Not sure why I systematically misspelled "Shikine" throughout when I first wrote this (I can spell it in 3 alphabets, but it was my native one I got wrong). It's been corrected. Post a comment: • • •
Shikine occupies just a ninth of its allotted map space
Jinata and Ashitsuki onsen
There are hundreds of carvings, some dating to 19C
Posted to Other Places • 2003.06.28 (Sat) • 12:33Comments
Posted by Kelly Barnes 2003.06.29, 22:45Posted by jh 2003.06.30, 22:48Posted by jh 2003.08.31, 10:24Send This Story to an Enemy
