A tad of a heavier topic today guys.
When visiting Japan, the two islands that I wanted to visit was the following: Miyajima a.k.a. Deer Island, and Okunoshima, also called Bunny Island. Miyajima was beautiful.
Okunoshima was impactful.
When you first arrive on the island you see a bunch of fluffy dots on the ground, roaming bunnies in their innocence and purity. Within walking a few minutes you have bunnies just swarming you, coming to you for some food. The island itself was extremely cold. So cold that I told myself, "lf this doesn't get me sick nothing will."
Nothing can make me sick now.
It was a lovely, quiet, remote island. A large bed of blue surrounding the soft sands of the island. Bunnies quietly hopping around, coming around to see whether we would feed them. As we continued to walk around though I started to see the other side of the island: the side that showed the history of war.
Okunoshima, though a popular travel destination today was a place which at one point was an island kept secret due to their manufacturing poison gas to use during the war on Chinese soldiers & civilians back in the 1930s and 40s. It has been argued that the bunnies were used as test subjects to check the effectiveness of the poison. Once the war ended it is believed that all of the test bunnies were euthanized, but the validity of that remains in question due to the current evidence that there are countless bunnies that remain on the island.
During the last hour on the island I imagined what it was like for the bunnies to live their life as the Japanese soldiers would poison the Chinese soldiers. It was tragically ironic.
It felt like a symbol of peace sitting in the middle of death.
I left the island with one sad realization, and there is no better way to express it without speaking Japanese, "人間はわがままだね”. People are selfish. Not in a demeaning way, but just flatly, selfish.
This last photo is my favorite image from the trip to that island. It is a kanji character that means correctness, or just.
Okunishima history source:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/japan-rabbit-island-dark-history-180962631/
Masumi