Elevation 148 m | Area 132 ha | |
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Address Iriomote, Taketomi, Yaeyama District, Okinawa Prefecture 907-1542, Japan Similar Yaeyama Islands, Hatoma, Iriomote‑jima, ピナイサーラ (Pinaisāla‑no‑taki), Taketomi Island | ||
Sotobanari (also Sotobakuri, Japanese 外離島) is one of the Yaeyama Islands, within the Sakishima Islands, at the southern end of the Ryukyu Islands. It is administered as part of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Its nearest large neighbour is Iriomote.
The small island (about 1 km in diameter), whose name means outer distant island, is vegetated, but has no running water. Sotobanari has one human inhabitant, a seventy-eight-year-old man named Masafumi Nagasaki, who has lived there in semi-isolation for two decades, nude, and buys food and water from a settlement an hour away by boat weekly with ¥10,000 sent by family, fully clothed. He was featured on Vice News'"Japan's Naked Island Hermit".
References
Sotobanari Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA