Japan’s famous Rabbit Island is set to introduce a new visitors’ tax, with the proceeds to go towards preserving the remains of the island’s less well-known sights, including a secret wartime poison gas research and production plant.
Advertisement
Tens of thousands of visitors flock to Okunoshima Island every year, the vast majority to admire the hundreds of long-eared residents. The island – which only covers 0.7 sq km – became a social media phenomenon in 2017, when there were some 400,000 visitors. According to local officials, 195,483 people visited in 2024.
The island is administered by Takehara City, in Hiroshima prefecture, and a panel is being created to work out the details of a new visitor tax to raise funds for the upkeep of facilities. The new fee is expected to be implemented in 2028, although a figure has not yet been decided.
A number of other cities and islands around Japan that attract large numbers of tourists have in recent years introduced similar levies, such as the 100 yen (68 US cents) fee charged to visit the holy island of Miyajima, also in Hiroshima prefecture. Similarly, the town of Taketomi is about to introduce a tax of 1,000 yen per person to visit Iriomote island in the far south of Okinawa.
According to city officials, a portion of the funds generated from the new tax will go towards improved infrastructure for people who come to interact with the rabbits, such as better waste facilities and water supplies, but much will go into protecting sites that few people know about before they arrive.
Japan signed the Geneva Protocol that in 1925 outlawed the use of chemicals as weapons, but just four years later, the government – under pressure from the military – secretly constructed a chemical weapons factory on Okunoshima. Isolated and 1.5km by boat from residents in the nearest town of Tadano-umi, the plant was used to manufacture mustard gas and tear gas.