005.Yoro Island 01.Village with coral stone walls (Japan)

2021-03-08

Yoro Island is famous from the beautiful village with coral-stone walls.

Yoro Island is a place like a remote island of a remote island, 2 hours by ferry from the southern end of Amami Oshima Island. The population, which was about 1,000 in 1955, is now about 100. I thought of it as a fishing island since it was surrounded by the sea, but, since the 17th century, sugarcane cultivation has been the main industry, and now beef cattle, especially calves, are mainly bred.

The attraction of the island is the beautiful village with coral-stone walls. In many of the Amami Islands, coral-stone walls have been replaced by block walls. Yoro is the only island where it remains on a large scale. The coral-stone wall is an excellent environmental device that prevents strong winds while allowing stone voids to pass through the breeze and prevent moisture from filling. It is also a bed for plants like ground cover plants or the roots of a tree are integrated with the wall.

In the 20th century of development supremacy, the island was left out from the development due to inconvenience, but in the 21st century, the local environment and landscape rooted in the place turn into a good example to show the way of sustainability.

The background of coral-stone walls of this scale has been that, in Yoro, the residents jointly built coral-stone walls and ordinary people could have them, meanwhile, in other islands, only wealthy families could usually build. This community was also advanced.