The Real Yonaguni

A few scenes from my novel, Katsuren, are set on the island of Yonaguni. Yonaguni is part of Okinawa Prefecture, an island in the Ryukyu island chain, and the westernmost point in Japan. It has several other claims to fame.

For starters, there are the wild horses indigenous to Yonaguni. They are tiny. One theory is that their small size is ecology in action. There isn’t a lot for them to eat, and there’s no reason why they have to be big in order to survive.

Next, Yonaguni does not have poisonous snakes, as do the rest of the Okinawa islands. The lack of deadly habu is, as far as I am concerned, a charm point for Yonaguni. The other thing Yonaguni does not have is pretty lagoons such as the one I called Sanzan Beach in my Katsuren novel.

These are three reasons to believe that Yonaguni’s geological history is also different from the rest of Okinawa’s. The differences raise many questions. Did Yonaguni become an island during a different time period, when sea temperature did not favor the formation of coral reefs? Was it originally attached to another part of the world where poisonous snakes were not part of the environmental package? Did it once have habu and then drown them by submerging when the sea level changed?

For interesting speculations about Yonaguni’s past, be sure to check out the article on Yonaguni’s submerged ruins in National Geographic online. (link in previous entry)