Qualla: Izu Oshima

Izu Oshima: Introduction

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Batholith, Public domain. Technically, this is Tokyo. Not the neon canyons of Shinjuku or the crossing at Shibuya, but a 91-square-kilometer volcanic island floating in the Philippine Sea, two hours by high-speed ferry from the capital's Takeshiba Pier. Izu Oshima is the largest and nearest of Tokyo's outlying islands, a place where the city's administrative reach extends to a landscape that feels nothing like the metropolis -- black lava fields, dense camellia forests, and the brooding cone of Mount Mihara rising 758 meters above the Pacific. The island has been part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park since its designation, sharing protected status with Mount Fuji itself.

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Image: Batholith | Public domain

Izu Oshima: Born from the Deep

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexrk2, CC BY-SA 3.0. Izu Oshima is a stratovolcano built from basalt, its foundations reaching down to an ocean floor hundreds of meters below the surface. The island's roughly circular coastline -- about 52 kilometers around -- is the visible rim of a volcanic cone that began forming between 10,000 ...

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Image: Alexrk2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Izu Oshima: Six Hamlets on the Rim

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yoshi Canopus, CC BY-SA 4.0. Life on Izu Oshima is organized around six traditional hamlets: Okata, Motomachi, Senzu, Nomashi, Sashikiji, and Habuminato. Motomachi serves as the administrative center, its port receiving ferries from both Tokyo and Atami on the Shizuoka coast. The island operates under the Os...

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Image: Yoshi Canopus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Izu Oshima: A Sanctuary for Wings

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ippukucho, CC BY 3.0. BirdLife International has designated Izu Oshima as an Important Bird Area, and the reason becomes clear in the island's dense subtropical forests. Japanese wood pigeons -- large, dark birds found almost nowhere else -- nest in the canopy alongside Ijima's leaf-warblers, a specie...

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Image: Ippukucho | CC BY 3.0

Izu Oshima: Monster Island

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ippukucho, CC BY 3.0. Few real places have hosted as many fictional catastrophes as Izu Oshima. In the 1984 film The Return of Godzilla, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces lure the King of the Monsters to Mount Mihara's crater, where detonated charges send him plummeting into the magma. Five years later...

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Image: Ippukucho | CC BY 3.0