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The Yomiuri Shimbun Manga murals line a street facing a harbor on Takaikami Island in Ehime Prefecture
By Naoya Seo / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
11:10 JST, October 26, 2024
KAMIJIMA, Ehime — Murals of popular manga on vacant houses and public facilities have turned a remote island in the Seto Inland Sea, which has a population of 11, into a new tourist destination as a manga island. The works include “Dr. Coto’s Clinic,” “Great Teacher Onizuka” and “Candy.” With a manga school scheduled to open next spring, the mural project is revitalizing the depopulated island.
The Yomiuri Shimbun
To reach Takaikami Island, you have to take the Setouchi Shimanami Kaido expressway — which connects Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, with Imabari, Ehime Prefecture — to Innoshima Island and transfer onto a ferry for about 50 minutes. When you arrive on the small island, which has a circumference of 5.3 kilometers, you will see a row of colorful character murals.
Osamu Hasebe, 76, who runs a medical company in Yamanashi Prefecture, launched the manga revitalization project. He first visited the island in 2007 at the invitation of his business partner Sadamu Kimura, 74, who is the head of the island’s community association.
Beautiful islands
The Yomiuri Shimbun Osamu Hasebe, left, and Sadamu Kimura point to a mural based on “Dr. Coto’s Clinic.”
Hasebe was fascinated by the beauty of the island and its many surrounding islands in the gentle Seto Inland Sea. He started visiting every month.
The island’s population had been gradually declining from a peak of about 190 in 1970. In 2007, it was only about 50. Vacant houses were seen here and there, and houses damaged by typhoons had been left abandoned. The following year, there were no children left on the island and the population continued to decline.
After hearing Kimura’s worries that the island would eventually be uninhabited, Hasebe began to act. Hasebe turned his focus to manga, which is popular among a wide range of generations, and planned to create a manga mural at his own expense.
The Yomiuri Shimbun A mural based on “Great Teacher Onizuka”
In 2016, Hasebe asked Takatoshi Yamada, a friend and the creator of “Dr. Coto’s Clinic,” to help with the plan. Yamada readily agreed, saying, “It fit the image of my manga,” which involves a medical practice set on a remote island, and created an original painting based on the manga.
The painting was made into a mural by a signboard company. The finished mural, which is 20 meters high and 10 meters wide, is on the exterior of the community center.
More and more murals
The Yomiuri Shimbun Murals based on “Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji”
Since then, three to five new manga murals have been added to the island every year. With Yamada’s help, original paintings were provided for free by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, creator of “Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji,” and Hiromi Morishita, creator of “Shonen Ashibe” (Young boy Ashibe). Much of the artwork in the murals was newly created for the island.
Over the past five years, Takaikami Island has gradually become known through social media. The island now attracts more tourists, not just day-trippers but also those who stay overnight at a guesthouse on the island.
This year, four new murals are planned on the island. In September, work began on a mural based on “Abare Hanagumi,” which used to be serialized in the Monthly Shonen Jump manga magazine. The manga artist, Yuichi Oshiyama, visited the island to see the work in progress saying, “Once murals of a manga are on the island, the work will be known by young people. It is a great honor for a manga artist.”
New residents
In April, Masafumi Baba, 49, moved to the island from Aichi Prefecture with his wife and two daughters, who are in elementary and junior high school, increasing the island’s population from 7 to eleven. Baba previously visited the island after learning about it through the internet and fell in love with it.
Baba is planning to open Manga-tei in October, which will be the only restaurant on the island.
“The power of manga is dawning on the island. I think it will attract more new residents, thanks in part to the murals,” said Baba. “There are many inconveniences, but it is rather interesting to start from nothing.”
Before the Baba family moved to the island, all the residents were over 70 years old. Kimura said with a laugh: “The island is becoming more and more colorful and home to more and more people. It’s just like a success story in a manga.”
Manga school
Next April, Hasebe and his team will open a manga school in an abandoned elementary and junior high school that has been leased from the town government. They plan to ask the manga artists who helped with the mural project to be instructors.
“I dream of producing a manga artist who will graduate from the school and draw a mural in the future,” Hasebe said. “I seriously want to show that even a ‘marginal island’ can revive itself. I want to use manga, which is part of Japanese culture, to also attract foreign tourists to the island.”
