Yonaguni-jima

Yonaguni is the last of Japan before Taiwan. The tourism association puts Taiwan 111 km from Irizaki at the western tip, and on a few clear days a year its mountains show on the horizon. The town counted 1,654 people at the end of June 2026 in three villages: Sonai on the north coast with the town office, Kubura on the west with the fishing port and the ferry, and Higawa on the south. A Ground Self-Defense Force coastal surveillance unit has been stationed on the island since 2016.

The island speaks its own language. Dunan munui has the fewest vowels of any Japonic language, three in all, and UNESCO classed it as severely endangered in 2009. The island's history includes the head tax that the Ryukyu court levied on Miyako and Yaeyama from 1637 until 1903, and its weight survives in stories such as the one told at the coastal crevasse of Kubura-bari, just north of Kubura.

For a visitor the island splits into cliffs and sea. On land you have the cape at Agarizaki with its lighthouse and grazing Yonaguni horses, the Sanninudai coast and Tachigami-iwa, and the long view from Tindabana over Sonai. Underwater there are hammerheads in winter off Irizaki and the stepped rock formation off Arakawa-bana that divers call the Iseki point, which most specialists in marine archaeology and landforms read as natural rock.