Okunoshima: Fluffy Bunnies, Poison Gas, and Forgotten History

What?
Okunoshima (大久野島) is a small island with a circumference of only around 4 km, making it possible to walk all over it in just two to three hours. With no permanent residents, it would likely have faded into complete obscurity were it not for the Imperial Japanese Army, which chose the island as a production site for chemical weapons in the years leading up to World War II. Even before then, the island had already been fortified with batteries built in light of the Russo-Japanese War, making it a veritable "war island", even though it has never seen fighting. Whatever its dark history, the island eventually gained an even greater claim to fame. In the 1970s, a group of elementary school children released a handful of rabbits here and, well... everyone knows the saying "breeding like rabbits." Today, Okunoshima is far better known as Rabbit Island, attracting throngs of tourists every day, most of whom stay around the port and hotel area where the landscape transforms into a sea of fluffy bunnies.
Where?
Okunoshima is a small island in the Seto Inland Sea (瀬戸内海) and is part of Hiroshima Prefecture (広島県). Despite its popularity and that of the nearby Shimanami Kaido (しまなみ海道) cycling route, it isn't connected by road to any of the surrounding islands, so the only way to reach it is by ferry. Many visitors come as day-trippers, travelling to and from Tadanoumi Port (忠海港), which is within walking distance of Tadanoumi Station (忠海駅) on the JR Kure Line (JR呉線). The island is also connected by ferry to Sakari Port (盛港) on Omishima (大三島), from where I arrived the previous evening.
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The Gateway to Rabbit Island Visit Takehara

When you've lived somewhere for a long time, everything gradually starts to feel normal. I used to tell everyone - including myself - that Japan is a country of extremes: modern versus traditional, city versus countryside, welcoming yet sometimes xenophobic, and so on.
I haven't said it in a long time, but nowhere has that thought felt more appropriate than here.
I mean...
Clandestine, evil chemical warfare and fluffy bunnies… it really doesn't get any more extreme than that. But in Japan, somehow, it simply exists.

My adventure on this island actually started the previous evening, when I arrived by ferry from Omishima after cycling across two of the Shimanami Kaido islands.
The plan had been to visit the small Poison Gas Museum, but - my bad luck - a power outage had forced the museum to close unexpectedly. Fortunately, the bunnies softened the disappointment, and instead I climbed to the island's highest point.
There are plenty of tourists here, but not many of them – especially the Japanese visitors, unfortunately – seem interested in either the island's darker history or in walking and hiking. The summit isn't particularly high, nor does it take much effort to reach, so I was genuinely surprised that almost nobody bothered. Some effort has clearly been made to make the summit worthwhile: binoculars overlooking the neighbouring islands, an astronomical wheel, and above all, wonderful views of nearby Koguno Island.
And, of course, there are war ruins.
Those, however, I would save for the next morning.

After a good night's sleep, I woke up early. Before breakfast. Before the first ferry of the day reached the island. I'd already noticed the evening before that most visitors rarely venture beyond the port and hotel area, but today was Saturday, probably bringing with it boatloads of day-trippers. So the early morning is the perfect moment to experience the island in complete solitude.

They probably spotted some food in the distance.

This is not the predatory bird I was talking about.

A pity, but some ruins have become off limits.

Still early in the morning, I was glad for the short stretch on the beach.

Well... "Solitude."

Because, of course, bunnies are absolutely everywhere. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Gazillions!
They all come running towards you, convinced you've brought food. I sometimes needed to be very careful not to step on one!
But there’s also other wildlife here. I spotted two snakes (no idea what species), startled a large bird of prey (again, no clue which one), and I got shit scared when a baby wild boar decided to investigate me. Because where there's a baby, there's usually a mother not too far away
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Apart from the wildlife, though, I had the island and its wartime ruins almost entirely to myself.
And it really is exactly as advertised: fluffy, huggable bunnies set against the haunting backdrop of wartime ruins and the remnants of a horrific poison gas programme. The ruins aren't quite as accessible as those on Tomogashima, which is understandable given the vastly larger number of visitors here. But they're fascinating in that they are different.
You wouldn't even have found this island on wartime maps. The chemical weapons programme was shrouded in secrecy, and I found myself walking around the island with that thought constantly in the back of my mind.
The soldiers operating the searchlights... to what extent could they even use them without compromising that secrecy?
The cathedral-like storage building for the poison gas tanks had once been camouflaged with paint. But was that camouflage really any more effective than the dense vegetation now swallowing the remaining walls?
For the better part of two hours, I found myself completely absorbed in thoughts like these. I was genuinely startled when I eventually returned to the port and was suddenly confronted by crowds of tourists pouring onto the island.
Choosing to arrive the evening before and explore Rabbit Island early on a Saturday morning had turned out to be exactly the right decision.

※ Upon leaving the island, I took the ferry to Tadanoumi and planned to continue by train to Kure. As I had about an hour to spare, I decided to see whether the nearby ruins of Kagi Castle were worth a visit.
Bluntly put: not really. On the other hand, if you happen to have an hour to kill, it certainly doesn't hurt either. It's only a 10-minute walk from the port, and while the short climb to what was once the castle keep doesn't reward you with spectacular views or hidden treasures, wandering around the castle ruins does offer pleasant views of the local beach, the nearby islands, and the rather peculiar cave on which the castle once stood.