Aoshima
— — a shrine inside a ring of stone washboards.
Not only on a wall.
“A small subtropical island off Miyazaki's coast, ringed by a strange wave-cut shelf of sandstone the locals call Oni no Sentakuita — the Devil's Washboard. A short footbridge, the Yayoi-bashi, runs out across the shallow water to the island. At the centre sits Aoshima Jinja, a vermilion shrine half-shaded by a grove of betel palms. The ema racks are stacked with painted shells. Kuroshio current keeps the air warm and the palms green through the winter. The whole island is a circle you can walk in about thirty minutes. from the studio
Aoshima, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Aoshima is a small subtropical island off the southern coast of Miyazaki City, in Miyazaki Prefecture on Kyūshū, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands. The island is roughly 1.5 kilometres in circumference, ringed by a wave-cut shelf of sandstone known as Oni no Sentakuita — the Devil's Washboard — formed over millions of years as alternating layers of sandstone and mudstone weathered into long parallel ridges. Aoshima is connected to the mainland by the Yayoi-bashi footbridge, about 250 metres long. The island lies within Nichinan Kaigan Quasi-National Park and is designated a Natural Monument.
The Devil's Washboard is the rock formation most visitors come for. The ridges run for hundreds of metres around the island, exposed at low tide and washed by the breakers at high tide, the result of weathering on a Miocene-age sedimentary sequence about ten million years old. The island's interior is held by a grove of betel palms and other subtropical species — some 200 plant species recorded inside the small circumference — a relic warm-climate flora that has been protected as a National Natural Monument since 1923. Walking the loop trail around the shore takes roughly thirty minutes at an easy pace.
Aoshima Shrine sits at the centre of the island, vermilion against the palms, dedicated to Yamasachi-hiko and his consort Toyotama-hime — figures from the Kojiki, the oldest Japanese chronicle. The shrine is closely tied to marriage and safe childbirth, and the racks of ema prayer plaques are stacked with painted shells rather than wooden tablets. On 17 January each year the shrine holds Hadaka Mairi, a winter pilgrimage in which participants wade through the cold sea to the island. In late July the Aoshima Shrine Naked Boat Festival, Funahiki Matsuri, draws crowds along the beach.