大津島

The ferry from Tokushima Port runs only a handful of times a day, and the crossing takes you out beyond the working waters of the Inland Sea to a thin sliver of land stretching north to south. Ōtsushima sits in the Setonaikai, with Kabashima to the north, Sushima to the south, and Kurokamishima to the east — a quiet constellation of smaller islands that hold the main one in place.

The island carries two histories at once. Quarries cut into the hillsides have long produced black granite, and the slopes are still given over to mikan, sweet potatoes, and watermelons grown in pockets of farmland. At the Kaiten Memorial Museum, the training base for the human torpedo Kaiten remains preserved, alongside what is left of the naval torpedo testing grounds. The fleet that once sheltered the battleship Yamato has long since dispersed, but the concrete structures keep their shape against the weather.

Daily life moves around the ferry timetable and the work of stone and citrus. There is little to do in the conventional sense, which is itself the texture of the place: the sound of water against the breakwater, the smell of cut granite dust, the slow ripening of fruit on terraced ground. Such islands, perhaps, ask less of a visitor than they offer — a chance to live for a while inside a smaller scale of time.