Sakura-jima represents Satsuma Mind

Sakura-jima seen across the strait

Here’s a picture of Sakura-jima, Kagoshima Prefecture, which attracted more visitors and tourists in the year when a popular TV drama, Atsu-hime (Princess Atsu) was aired, successfully lasting for a year. The drama featured a woman who married into the Tokugawa, whose authority was becoming shaky after 250-year-long reign. The time was plunging into one of the most exciting and dramatic periods of Japanese history and she lived through that historical transition with her faith and conviction, without denying what fate had given her. It’s a drama, a fiction, and of course too gorgeous; but people tend to be drawn to the history of their own country thanks to this type of history-based dramas. Above all, Kagoshima Prefecture, once called Satsuma before the advent of modern history of Japan, enjoyed the popularity the drama had given them.

Sakura-jima or Cherry Island if literally translated, its circumference being about 52 km, is an active volcano soaring proud and magnificent four kilometers off Kinko Bay (Kagoshima Bay), Kagoshima City. It is active EVERY DAY, with steam, vapor, and fumes noticed commonly around its south summit. The volcano was born and has grown at the southern edge of Eye-la Caldera which was formed 25 thousand years back on the occasion of a very major volcanic eruption. There are three peaks: the north (1117m), the middle (1060m), and the south (1040m). The south peak is active, while the other two are quiet and dormant.

Sakura-jima has behaved well enough and no major disasters have happened recently. But it’s a rare case to have an active volcano by a large city, in fact the capital city of Kagoshima Prefecture, where approximately 600 thousand people live. No wonder the city struck in 1960 a sister city relationship with Naples well-known for its once ferocious Mt. Vesuvius. And remember: about 5000 people do live on the island and there are even a city-run apartment complex built with the concept of “Living comfortably even on days volcanic ash falls on your houses.”

The volcano repeated major-scale eruptions more than 30 times in written history. Some of them are still touted and remembered among the locals very well.

Once Sakura-jima was truly an island but now is connected to Oh-sumi Peninsula at the southeastern point due to the extraordinary eruption in 1914. The reclaimed land used to be a strait, 400 meters wide and 72 meters deep. The black fume from the eruption reached the altitude of 8000 meters. The volcanic ash spewed was found even at Kamchatka Peninsula. Yes, unfortunately some people got killed or missing. But the numbers were surprisingly small; about 20 thousand lived on the island in those day and 35 died and 23 were never found (34 of them got killed in induced earthquakes; while the others got involved in the eruption itself). Considering the scale of the disaster, the casualties were limited to the least possible. The locals knew something unprecedented in their life time would be happening and voluntarily evacuated before the eruption, while the meteorological authorities were saying they couldn’t detect anything significant. It was obvious to the locals, looking at unusual phenomena which they had been told to be cautious of: the well water sprang up; everywhere on the island was hot water coming out of the niches of the ground and rocks; worms, frogs, and snakes all came out of the ground and wiggling, hopping, and slithering, even though many of them were hibernating for the cold winter season.

Every year there’s an evacuation drill conducted seriously and the wisdom of life acquired through centuries while living on the volcano has been passed to the next and future generations.