Drive to the southern coast of Awaji and follow the signs to Habu Port (土生港). From there, Nushima Kisen runs a small ferry every hour or two across two kilometers of strait to Nushima — a fishing island of about four hundred residents, three kilometers long, accessible only by sea. The crossing takes ten minutes. A round-trip adult ticket is ¥920.
Nushima is small, quiet, and wholly committed to one claim: that it is Onogoro, the first island, the place where Izanagi and Izanami descended from heaven and began the work of creating Japan.
What happened here
The kuni-umi narrative, as a reminder: Izanagi and Izanami stir the ocean with a spear; the brine that drips from the spear’s tip congeals into the first island; they descend onto it, build a cosmic pillar, walk, marry, bear the rest of the islands.
The three traditional candidates for the location of that first island are Onokoro Jinja in inland Awaji, Eshima off the northern coast, and Nushima off the southern coast. Of the three, Nushima’s claim is the most insistent. The island has its own Onokoro Jinja (with the same name as the inland shrine but written 自凝神社, slightly different characters); the local fishermen treat the kuni-umi as their origin story; older Heian and Kamakura textual traditions favour Nushima over Eshima; and the island’s geography includes a feature the other two candidates lack: Kamitategami-iwa, a thirty-meter sea stack on the southeastern shore, which is claimed to be the actual cosmic pillar around which Izanagi and Izanami walked.
What you’ll actually see
The ferry pulls into the small harbor on the north side of the island. From there, the village is a five-minute walk — narrow streets, fishing nets drying along the seawalls, a few small shrines, a couple of inns offering seafood meals.
From the harbor, a hiking path leads around the island’s southern coast to the sea stacks. The full circuit takes about ninety minutes at a relaxed pace, with stops at viewpoints. The path is not difficult, but it is exposed and unshaded; come prepared in summer, and note that local tourist information recommends November through March as the best months to walk it.
The island has a few small temples and shrines beyond Onokoro Jinja, but no large or famous ones. What dominates the experience of being on Nushima is its smallness and its quiet — and, on the southern coast, the stacks rising from the sea.
Three things to look for
- Onokoro Jinja (自凝神社) — Nushima’s own Onogoro shrine, in the village center. Smaller than the inland shrine of similar name, but treated by locals as the more authoritative.
- The sea stacks of the southern coast — Kamitategami-iwa is the most famous, but several other dramatic rock formations rise along the same stretch of shore.
- The fishermen’s seafood — Nushima is known for hamo (pike conger), traditionally served sliced and parboiled with plum sauce at the village inns. Lunch on the island is part of the pilgrimage.
How it fits the trail
Nushima is the deepest investment a Kojiki Trail visitor can make in Awaji’s southern half. The ferry crossing alone takes you across waters that, by tradition, are the same waters Izanagi stirred with his spear. The island itself is small enough that you can walk it in an afternoon, but committed enough — in its naming, its shrines, its local culture — that the kuni-umi narrative feels alive there in a way it does not, quite, at the inland Onokoro Jinja.
Plan a full day. Take the morning ferry from Habu Port, walk the southern coast to Kamitategami-iwa, eat lunch in the village, return on a late afternoon ferry. From Habu Port back to Iwaya is about an hour and a half’s drive up the length of the island.
You will not have proven anything. But you will have stood on an island where the question of where Japan began is not a question at all.