小大下島

The ferry from Imabari port — the Daini Sekizen, or the Daisan Tokukai — works its way out through the Geiyo islands before reaching Ōshita port, and only from there does the smaller island come into view. Limestone gives the place its shape, wedged between Okamura-jima and Ōshita-jima within the Sekizen archipelago. The quarries that once shipped stone to Nihon Cement and Asano Cement have fallen quiet, though their traces remain in the rock faces and the disused workings scattered through the interior.

What carries on now is smaller in scale: fishing boats working the Seto Inland Sea, mikan groves on the slopes, and the catch the islanders call dosaba. A spring rises in one of the old excavation sites, clean enough that water is sent across to Okamura-jima. The Yama-jinja sits where islanders have long offered their prayers, neither restored nor neglected, simply present.

The contrast with the busier islands of the Geiyo chain is felt in the absence of through traffic. No bridge arrives here; the ferry timetable shapes the day. Walking the shoreline, one passes concrete remnants of the Shōwa-era industry alongside nets drying in the sun — two layers of the same island, holding together without commentary.