嘉弥真島

The boat from Kohama crosses a narrow stretch of water and arrives at a low, flat island where nothing rises high enough to block the horizon. Hamagō creeps along the sand, chigaya and susuki grasses cover the inland, and the eye travels unimpeded in every direction. This is Kayama, one of the small islands belonging to Taketomi-chō in the Yaeyama group, set within the Iriomote-Ishigaki National Park.

The rest house on the southwestern shore offers showers and a place to change, and camping is permitted nearby. Rabbits move through the grass — descendants of a population that has been managed for some time now — and stone foundations, fragments of pottery, and a remoteness-watching platform mark layers of earlier presence, including the pastures opened in the early modern period under the Ryūkyū court and shards of Chinese ceramics from the fifteenth century. The Kayamajima Tanabata Hoshi Matsuri arrives once a year and then the island returns to its grasses.

What distinguishes Kayama from the more frequented islands of the Yaeyamas is the absence of a settlement. There is no village street, no shop, no scheduled ferry beyond chartered small craft and tour boats. The wind comes from every quarter, the coral lies close, and the sound of the sea fills whatever silence the grass does not. Such an island, perhaps, asks only for slow attention and a return trip arranged in advance.