S P O T ／ SPOT-057

Kamijima Island Observation Post Ruins

神島 監的哨跡かみしま かんてきしょうあと

Kamijima is a small island in Ise Bay, two thousand inhabitants, no cars, reached by a thirty-minute ferry from Toba and known mainly as the setting for Yukio Mishima's novel The Sound of Waves. Tucked into the cliffs on the island's southeastern side is a relic of a much darker era: a concrete observation post built by the Imperial Japanese Army to monitor the bay during the Second World War, abandoned in 1945 and slowly being reclaimed by salt-spray and vines ever since. Reaching it requires a fifty-minute walk along the island's narrow coastal trail, through pine forests and past tiny shrines, until the rectangular concrete structure appears suddenly at the edge of the sea. From its slit windows the view is breathtaking — open ocean, distant ships, the Atsumi Peninsula on the horizon — and the contrast between that beauty and the weapon-spotting purpose for which the building was constructed is the entire experience. The structure is unfenced and on public land, but the island offers no facilities; this is an observational visit, not a destination.