Scenes from a small, sparsely populated Japanese island

On a cold and windy day, the only resident I saw, apart from the couple running the restaurant I stopped at for lunch, was a man on a small motorbike. The handful of other people pottering about all arrived and left on the same ferry as me.

With a population of only 150 or so, the lack of visible life probably isn’t all that surprising. Even more so considering I was only there for a couple of hours or so. Still, exploring Ogijima’s sole settlement said a lot, as many of the houses were empty, with more than a few of them in a pretty bad state to say the least. Elements that made the island feel like a microcosm in many ways of the demographic challenges Japan is facing.

That said, while the number of inhabitants has dropped considerably — it was around 300 at the turn of the century — there are efforts to reverse that trend, or at the very least halt it, with 1 in 3 residents now migrants. A shift that may well just save the island, along with its continued involvement in the Setouchi Triennale art festival. But on a wintery day when the only noticeable activity was at the ferry port, it was hard not to think about the island’s past rather than its potential future.