Awaji Island : Japan’s First Island
Located at the eastern edge of the Setouchi region, where the Seto Inland Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, Awaji Island is Japan’s best-kept secret. It has all the best that rural Japan has to offer, including rolling farmland banked by scenic mountain ranges, towns and villages filled with ancient Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, craft workshops, hot spring resorts, golden sand beaches, and spectacular sunrises and sunsets along the island’s two long coastlines. Its facilities for tourists are excellent and there’s plenty to do because it’s Japan’s seventh largest island and the biggest island in the Seto Inland Sea. It’s also conveniently located and easy to get to. It takes only two hours by train or one hour by car from Kyoto. It lies just across the bay from Osaka. And it is a hop-skip-and-a-jump from Kobe via the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world. (Pictured in the title block above.)
“food×reflection: Dining #01”
Image Credit: Kanae Yokoyama
If you’ve come to Japan to eat, you’ll need to go no further. Awaji Island produces an incredibly diverse range of foods from both sea and land. Foods whose quality meant that they were once the preserve of the Imperial Family, and the exclusive delicacies of Japan’s top restaurants are now featured at the island’s ever-growing number of sea-to-table and farm-to-table eateries. These are some of the best restaurants, cafés, and bars you’ll find anywhere in Japan, headed by chefs who are creatively working to reimagine and define the island’s cuisine. (See related story “food×reflection: Dining #01”) Their efforts are likely to become the latest chapter in the story about how Awaji Island has influenced Japan’s culture over the country’s long history.
Birth of A Nation & A Way of Life
It’s believed that Awaji was Japan’s first island, formed aeons ago when it separated from Japan’s landmass through geologic activity before the rest of Japan shattered into its current archipelagic form of over 6,800 islands. Sideways shifts in tectonic plates under the island dislodged a chunk of land—about the size of Singapore—from mainland Japan, and ocean water poured around it through narrow gaps created in the north, the Akashi Strait, and in the south, the Naruto Strait. The Naruto Strait continues to be one of the largest and fastest moving whirlpools in the world, and the drama of it can be observed from the southern shore of Awaji Island, tourist ships which take you out to the edge of the whirlpool, and from the O-Naruto Bridge, which spans the strait and connects Awaji to Shikoku Island in the south.
During certain times of the day and year, the Naruto Whirlpool can reach a diameter of 66 feet (20 m) and speeds of 12 mph (20 km/h).
The violent forces of nature continue to shape Awaji Island. The epicenter of the Great Hanshin Earthquake, which occurred in 1995, was directly under the island, causing the fault line that runs through the island to move four feet (1.2 meters) horizontally and one and a half feet (half a meters) vertically. This can be seen at the Hokudan Earthquake Memorial Park & Nojima Fault Preservation Museum, where an exposed section of the fault line is displayed for visitors.
It was powerful natural phenomena like these that gave rise to Japan’s deep respect for nature, the belief that gods live in all things—rocks, trees, rivers, mountains, the wind, and the rain, and that man must strive to live in harmony with nature to survive. Called Shinto, this belief’s system’s oldest shrine in Japan, the Izanagi-Jingu Shrine, is on Awaji Island.
Izanagi-Jingu, the oldest Shinto shrine in Japan, is dedicated to the gods who created the country. Under the deck of the honden main hall of the shrine are a group of boulders worshipped as the divine origins of Japan, which can be seen behind a lattice wood screen.
Awaji Island is also credited with the origins of the country’s unique sea culture and way of life. People have lived on the island for at least 10,000 years based on ruins located at the port town of Yura on the east side of the island. These early inhabitants were written about over 1,200 years ago in the first chapter of Japan’s oldest historical record, the Kojiki, as the amabito, or sea people. They were fishermen, traders, and adventurers who were considered to be the builders of the early sea-faring nation. Their artifacts and other cultural assets are found across the island and include Japan’s oldest, richly decorated dotaku bells used in agricultural rites and rituals, ancient bronze mirrors brought back from China and axeheads from Korea, salt fields that produced enough sea salt to be exported, and the Gossa-Kaito Archeological Site, a Yayoi period (1,000 BC to 300 AD) village that was an iron-making center. Located on the western shore of the Island, facing the Seto Inland Sea, the site offers a fascinating look into the world of the Yayoi people who lived on Awaji Island during the time when iron-making and settled farming first took place in Japan on the islands of the Setouchi region and then spread to the rest of the country.
The Gossa-Kaito Archeological Site consists of twenty-three thatched structures, twelve of which were used to forge iron tools for fishing and farming and also for weapons. The others were pit dwellings for the people who lived there during the Yayoi Period (1,000 BC to 300 AD).
Japan’s Food Island
The sea people of Awaji Island flourished through the succeeding Kofun period (300 AD - 538 AD), but when Japan unified into a single kingdom in the Asuka period (538 AD - 710 AD), Awaji Island became a backwater to the country’s new capital, which was built inland behind mountains in Nara on mainland Honshu Island for defensive reasons. Albeit an important food backwater, as the island became a Miketsu-Kuni, one of three region’s whose foods were served to the Imperial Family and Court at Nara (710-794) and then at Kyoto during the Heian period (794-1185), including the Emperor’s drinking water brought daily from springs on Awaji Island.
Over the centuries, the island acquired two more appellations in addition to Japan’s “First Island.” It became known as Japan’s “Shoku no Shima” (Food Island) because of its role in supplying its high-quality foods to the sophisticated kitchens of Kyoto, the gourmand merchants of Osaka, and the international culinary community of Kobe. It’s also called a “Mini-Japan” because it’s a microcosm of the country in so many ways and especially in the diversity of the foods it produces.
Akashi Sea Bream
With the Seto Inland Sea on its west side and the Pacific Ocean on its east, Awaji fishermen catch both mild, lean coastal seafoods and richer-tasting, fattier deep-sea ones. Akashi Sea Bream is considered the best Red Sea Bream (Madai) in Japan (and is still served to the Emperor in Tokyo) because the fast currents of the Akashi Strait and healthy diet of the abundant sources of other seafoods it feeds on produce a sea bream that is exceptional in terms of the firm leanness of its flesh, sweet taste, and appearance.
Octopus is another prized catch, with those coming from the Akashi Strait being firm in texture (known as Akashi Octopus) while those caught in the Seto Inland Sea are softer and sweeter. Other notable specialites are Conger Eel (Hamo), Blowfish (Fugu), Sea Urchin (Uni), Spanish Mackerel (Sawara), Scabbard Fish (Tachiuo), Sea Bass (Suzuki), Whitebait (Shirasu), and other baby anchovies and sardines, which when dried are called Iriko or Niboshi. They are a staple that is used throughout the Setouchi as a rich source of calcium in dishes and as a seasoning to make a deeply flavorful dashi stock.
Based out of Yura Port on the east side of Awaji Island, this couple has been fishing Tai (Sea Bream), Hamo (Conger Eel), and Ika (Squid) for sixty years, ever since they met when they finished junior high school and got married at age fifteen. They say that each type of seafood tastes different depending on where it’s caught in the sea.
A seafood that Awaji Island is also particularly famous for is wakame seaweed. Wakame is a type of edible kelp; the only type of edible kelp that grows in southern waters. In addition to a delicately salty, slight sweet, marine taste and flavor that’s flush with umami richness, like all kelps, wakame has one of the largest amounts of beneficial Omega-3 fatty acid of any sea or land vegetable. It also has high levels of calcium, iodine, thiamine and niacin, and like all seaweeds, it has virtually no calories. Quite the opposite, it’s been proven to burn body fat while its enzymes also work to eliminate salt from the body. Wakame is eaten almost every day by people living in the Setouchi. If not in the morning miso soup, then in some type of salad.
Awaji Island is, by far, the largest producer of wakame in the Setouchi, and its wakame, known as Naruto Wakame, is considered among the best in Japan. The mineral-rich, fast-moving waters of the Naruto Strait, where it grows, both enrich and stress the seaweed, giving it an extra rich taste and a crisp texture, even when cooked, rather than a satiny one, which is characteristic of wakame harvested elsewhere. These features make Naruto Wakame a great addition to any kind of salad, not just a seaweed salad, and to any kind of soup.
At Deguchi Shoten in Sumoto City, which has been in business since 1860, Masaya Deguchi sells some of the best Naruto Wakame available on Awaji Island in addition to other dried seafood such as dried baby anchovies and sardines called iriko or niboshi.
Naruto Wakame
Iriko / Niboshi
Awaji’s farms are as blessed as its surrounding seas, benefitting from large, open fields, mild, sunny weather, and mineral-rich soil due to the fact that a large part of the island was formerly an ancient lake bed, raised to the surface by earthquakes. Local farmers produce all kinds of vegetables and fruits, including the Naruto Orange, a native type of undomesticated sour mandarin, which may be a remnant from the time Japan was connected to the East Asian continent
The island also has a vibrant livestock and dairy business, which dates back centuries. According to Imperial Court records, milk, cheese, and butter were produced on Awaji Island since at least 738 AD. Awaji Beef, a certified type of premium Tajima Wagyu Beef from which Kobe Beef is also derived, is a descendant of cattle first brought to the region from China during the Yayoi period.
Onions
One of the foods the island is famous for throughout Japan is a relative newcomer. It’s onions; common yellow onions. Onion fields are everywhere. Onions can be seen everywhere. Popping out of the ground in spring, when they are their freshest and sweetest, and again in late summer and autumn, when they are hanging in sheds and on the eaves of houses to dry. They also can be found filling the stalls of farmers markets and the vegetable sections of grocery stores and lining the menus of restaurants, buffets at hotels, and tables at homes. Onions are prepared in all kinds of ways on the island: as a clear or creamy soup, in miso soups and salads or as a salad itself, steamed and roasted, batter-fried and tempura-fried, and as salty senbei cracker snacks and sweet desserts.
Onions were first introduced into Japan about 130 years ago, and they quickly became rooted in the country’s cuisine because they tick the fundamentally important culinary box of being high in savory umami deliciousness. They also offer the unique flavor combination of being crispy, sweet, pungent, and beautifully white and contain enzymes that help purify the blood. In terms of flavor, onions filled a gap in the Japanese pantry between the country’s sweet, mildly pungent naga-negi leeks and its hot, spicy shishito and manganji peppers.
Onions have become the second most popular vegetable in Japan. That’s in part thanks to Awaji’s onion farmers who helped revolutionize onion-eating in Japan by creating “new” onions, called shin-tamanegi in Japanese. A new onion is simply a yellow onion harvested early, from March through May, when the onions are sweeter, milder, and juicier than late summer mature onions. New onions are considered “eating” onions, enjoyed raw—straight out of the ground if one is so fortunate, used fresh in dishes, or only lightly cooked.
As a result, there are two distinct seasons and types of onions in terms of their use in Japan. After May, onions are harvested in August and September and dried for one to two months and then sold as “cooking” onions.
Although Awaji Island is no longer the largest producer of onions in Japan, ceding that position some years ago to Hokkaido Island and Saga prefecture in Kyushu, where large mechanized farms are the norm, Awaji Onions are still considered the best in the country. With only a wisp of papery skin, they’re sweet, rich-tasting, mildly spicy, extremely juicy, and tender.
One of the factors behind the great taste of Awaji Onions is that its farms typically are small and personally tended, like the farm (above) that belongs to Mitsugu Sasada (below). He’s been organically farming onions for twenty-five years, ever since retiring from a position as a local civil servant.
Formerly residents of Tokyo, Saki and Yuta Misaka moved to Awaji Island because of its quality of life. After two years of living on the island, they took up farming, continuing the time-honored island tradition of providing specialty foods, like the Italian Rossa Lunga onions they grow, to the professional kitchens of Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe.
A Modern Island Paradise
Being devoted to fishing and farming throughout its history, industrialization passed Awaji Island by despite being close to major urban centers, as did suburbanization, and the island is one of those unique places in the world that is conveniently close to big cities but retains an unspoiled landscape and its rural charms.
The kiln and studio of ceramic artist Masaaki Nishimura, Rakutogama Cafe & Gallery is one of the many delightful places to stop as you criss-cross the island. Awaji’s clay is famous for its matte sheen quality, and the island is a leading maker of traditional kawara tiles used for roofing.
The one ancillary industry the island developed is tourism, initially for people living in Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe seeking a weekend get-away. As a result, there are many great restaurants, inns, and hotels in a mixture of old and new styles dispersed throughout the island. Many have hot springs channeled up into comforting baths from fissures in the earth below, which can be enjoyed on a daily basis or during an overnight stay.
Sumoto City, the biggest town on the island, is famous for the brownish color of its hot springs, which is believed to rejuvenate your skin and give you a healthy glow. Sumoto is a good base from which to explore the island because of its historic old town, many cafes, and upscale dining. Right on the Bund is L’Isoletta, an Italian-inspired restaurant headed by the top chef on the island, Yukinori Itsubo. It has a stunning view of the town’s pine tree-covered Ohama Beach and ocean beyond from its outdoor terrace.
Up the coast to the north are two buildings designed by one of Japan’s leading architects, Tadao Ando. Yumebutai is a complex that includes the Grand Nikko Hotel, restaurants, shops, a conference center, outdoor theater, and the abstract “100 Step Garden.” A bit farther up the shore is the most famous religious structure built by Ando, Honpukuji Temple, better known as the “Water Temple.” A head sanctuary of the Omuro sect of Shingon Buddhism, the oldest sect of Esoteric Buddhism in Japan, the temple was originally founded in 815 AD. It was rebuilt by Ando as a spiritual vision of paradise, presumably inspired by the actual paradise of sea and land of Awaji Island.
Designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, Yumebutai is a complex of hotel, restaurants, shops, outdoor theater, conference center, and the abstract “100 Step Garden.”
In addition to Awaji’s many hot springs resort hotels, one can also enjoy the island’s thermal waters at public baths, like this one in the old town of Sumoto City.
The white building is L’Isoletta, an Italian-inspired restaurant in Sumoto City, which is owned and operated by the island’s top chef, Yukinori Itsubo.
Located in Sumoto City’s old town, Farm Studio (above and below) is a cafe and shared work space run by Yusuke Tomita and his wife Shoko. The food they serve is representative of Awaji cuisine: fresh, seasonal ingredients prepared in an eclectic mix of culinary styles with the sole aim of being natural, healthy, and delicious.
From the marina at Sumoto City, located just south of the town, one can hire boats for ocean cruises and fishing trips.
Access
As already pointed out, Awaji Island is very conveniently located, especially if you’re already visiting Kyoto, Osaka, or Kobe. There are no trains on the island, so you need to arrive by car, pubic transportation, or bicycle. There are inter-city buses from the JR Sannomiya train station in Kobe on Honshu Island that go to several key locations on the island. JR Sannomiya station is a one-mile walk south from the Shin-Kobe station on the JR Shinkansen bullet train route. There is a also ferry from the town of Akashi, just outside of Kobe, that goes to the northern tip of the island. It takes 15 minutes and runs regularly throughout the day. It’s popular among cyclists, who go to Awaji Island to do the 93-mile (150-km) course around the island’s coastline. Once on the island, local buses can take you to all the major sites. You can also charter taxis for private tours.