安居島

The passenger boat *Aihoku* leaves from Hojo Port and reaches the island in a little over half an hour, crossing a stretch of the Seto Inland Sea where the water seems to slow the boat down rather than carry it. Agijima sits near the middle of Iyo-nada, a thin sliver of land — long east to west, narrow north to south — with a low wooded rise at its center and a single fishing settlement on its southern shore. Most of the island is scrub forest. The houses face the water, as they must.

The population now numbers in the low double digits, a quiet remainder of a village that once held several hundred. In the late Edo and Meiji years, this was a stopping point for sail-powered vessels, and the traces of that earlier traffic — the layout of the lanes, the proportions of the older buildings — remain legible without being explained. Today the work is fishing, and the products are what the surrounding water gives: hijiki, other seaweeds, the day's catch. A small inn on the south side of the village takes in anglers and the occasional visitor. On the western side, a swimming beach quietly serves the summer.

What distinguishes the texture here from other Seto islands is the scale of the silence. Agijima was absorbed into Matsuyama City in 2005, but administrative inclusion changes little of the daily rhythm — the boat arrives, the boat departs, and in between the island returns to its own time. Such places, perhaps, ask only that one match their pace.