Men-only island may become world heritage site

NOT many people consider visiting Okinoshima, a small island off the coast of mainland Japan.

That may soon change since the International Council on Monuments and Sites, an advisory body, recommended it to be a UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Heritage site. The Japan Times reported that recommendation is likely to be supported during a July meeting in Poland.

While the status would gain the island international name recognition, many tourists would face obstacles: women are not allowed to step foot on the island and the priests who live on the island only allow men to visit one day a year.

The 80 hectare island is steeped in religious tradition. It’s home to the Okitsu shrine, one of three small shrines on neighbouring islands that together constitute the Munakata Grand Shrine. These shrines honour three deities which, as legend has it, were the children of Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the god of sea and storms.

Between the 4th and 9th centuries, the waters around these islands were home to important trade routes from Japan to China and the Korean Peninsula. The shrines were a means of petitioning the gods to protect these ships. During that time, Smithsonian reported, the faithful left some 80 000 offerings at the shrines .

These traditions and the 80 000 artefacts they produced, are why the island might be denoted a heritage site. But they also dictate many of its Times. “Shinto treats blood as an impurity.”

Men must strip naked and perform a cleansing ritual before stepping foot on the island, the BBC reported. What this ritual consists of remains unclear, as they are not allowed to divulge the details of their trip, nor are they allowed to take anything off the island.

Visitors are only allowed to visit the island on May 27, during its annual festival which is held to “comfort the spirits of Japanese and Russian servicemen who died during the Naval Battle of the Sea of Japan near Okinoshima in 1905”, the Mainichi reported. Even then, only 200 are selected to attend.

This isolation has proven damaging to the island, as Andrew S Wright reported in National Geographic. Pred- atory rats have taken over the land, the rodents’ spread unabated by human interference. This has led to the decline of the island’s bird population, because the rats eat their sustenance.

Some have publicly opposed the potential inclusion of Okinoshima as a World Heritage site, such as the US-based Universal Society of Hinduism, which has urged Unesco not to endorse the site, the Eurasia Review reported.

“Where women are revered, there the gods are pleased; where they are not, no rite will yield any fruit,” the group’s president Rajan Zed said, quoting Hindu scripture.

Unesco has 1 052 heritage sites, which are deemed places of “outstanding universal value” that meet one of several criteria, such as representing “a masterpiece of human creative genius” or bearing “a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilisation which is living or which has disappeared”.

If the island is chosen, many claim its rules won’t change.

“Our stance will remain unchanged even if it’s registered in the World Heritage list,” an unnamed Munakata Grand Shrine official told the Mainichi.

Takayuki Ashizu, the chief priest of the Munakata Grand Shrine, agreed, telling the Japan Times: “We wouldn’t open Okinoshima to the public even if it is inscribed on the Unesco cultural heritage list because people shouldn’t visit out of curiosity.” – Washington Post