Awaji Island
— — the first island, by the old telling.
Not only on a wall.
“The Kojiki names Awaji as the first island Izanagi and Izanami brought up from the sea, and the long green back of it still sits across the Seto Inland Sea between Honshu and Shikoku like the country's older self. The Akashi Kaikyō Bridge lands on its northern shore — nearly four kilometres of suspension that for two decades held the world record. South, the Naruto whirlpools turn against the tide between Awaji and Shikoku. In between: terraced onion fields, quiet harbours, a handful of small temples among the cedars.
Awaji Island, 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.
Awaji is the largest island in the Seto Inland Sea, lying between the main island of Honshu and Shikoku, and administratively part of Hyōgo Prefecture. It covers roughly 592 square kilometres and is home to about 125,000 people across three cities — Awaji, Sumoto, and Minamiawaji. Parts of the coast fall within Setonaikai National Park, one of Japan's oldest. In the Kojiki, the eighth-century chronicle of the country's mythic origin, Awaji is named as the first of the islands Izanagi and Izanami brought up from the sea, and that role still shapes how the island is talked about today.
The Naruto Strait, between the southern tip of Awaji and Shikoku, narrows enough that the tide rushing through it forms whirlpools that can reach twenty metres across at full spring tide — among the largest in the world. Sightseeing boats from Fukura on Awaji and Naruto on Shikoku run out to them on the four daily tide windows. Above the strait, the Ōnaruto Bridge carries the road south. To the north, the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge crosses to Kobe with a main span of 1,991 metres — the longest suspension bridge in the world from 1998 until 2022.
Awaji is reached from Kobe in about an hour by highway bus across the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, or by ferry from Akashi to Iwaya at the island's northern tip. A car is the easiest way to move between the coastal towns, the Honpukuji Water Temple designed by Tadao Andō, and the onion farms of the south. Awaji onions are a national mark of the island — sweet, late-spring crop, sold roadside in mesh bags. The Awaji Yumebutai complex above Iwaya, also by Andō, was built into a hillside scarred by the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake.