Japan’s rabbit island Okunoshima has a dark and deadly history

Okunoshima is not unique among the some 3,000 islands dotting Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, between Hiroshima prefecture and the island of Shikoku. Neither the biggest nor the smallest, the tiny land mass measures less than a square kilometre. There’s no natural water supply – that’s shipped in from the mainland – and as of 2010, only 26 people live on the island, but Okunoshima is far better known for its population of four-legged residents.

There is a strange propensity in Japan to name islands after cute critters, and myths abound of how beloved animals arrived in several remote destinations spanning the Japanese archipelago. Tashirojima, for example, acquired its famous cats during the late Edo period (1603-1868), to act as pest control on the island’s silkworm farms, a wholesome, practical explanation.

The origin story for Okunoshima’s rabbit population, however, leading to the island’s colloquial renaming as Usaginoshima, is anything but what one might expect in regard to a tourist island overrun with cute little bunnies, and the more the layers of history are gnawed back, the more sinister and un-cute this place becomes.

Though motives remain unclear, local authorities sought to make Okunoshima a tourist destination in 1958. The island was (and still is) part of the Setonaikai National Park, designated in 1934, but during those interim decades, some dark secrets were buried, burned or otherwise disposed of. For a while the island was not included on maps but, in the end, no matter how light and fluffy, no matter how “kawaii”, nothing could obscure the island’s production of a massive, secret stockpile of chemical weapons.