Chiikawa's Island Arc and its Origins Explained & Pilgrimage Sites to Visit
Chiikawa's first film arrives summer 2026. Its Island Arc echoes Japan's Yaobikuni legend, with parallels and fan pilgrimage spots across Aichi and Fukui.
Sakushima
佐久島
Things to Do in and Around Sakushima
Sakushima is a small island in Mikawa Bay, part of Aichi's Nishio City, with an area of just 1.81 square kilometers. Rows of houses with black-painted wooden walls form the village, and art pieces appear here and there along the coast and in the fields. Just a 20-minute high-speed ferry ride from Isshiki Port, time on the island seems to flow a bit differently from the mainland.
Real-Life Locations & Inspiration
Anime Pilgrimage
Anime and manga set in and around Sakushima, and where to find their real-life locations.
Location
Where is Sakushima?
Sakushima belongs to Isshiki, a district of Nishio City in Aichi Prefecture. It sits roughly at the center of Mikawa Bay, about 8 kilometers off the coast from Isshiki Port. The island covers 1.81 square kilometers with a coastline of about 11 kilometers, and although it is the largest of the islands in Mikawa Bay, you can walk around it in half a day or cycle around it in a few hours.
The population is around 200. Red pines and camellias grow on the low hills, while white sand beaches and rocky shores follow the water's edge, giving the island its gentle character. The settlements split into the West District and the East District, and most visitors begin a tour from one of the two ferry terminals.
Local transport
Getting Around
Two high-speed ferries operated by Nishio City, Hamakaze and Sachikaze III, run between Isshiki Port and Sakushima. The crossing takes about 20 minutes to Sakushima West Port and about 25 minutes to Sakushima East Port. The one-way fare is 830 yen for adults.
The nearest train station to Isshiki Port is Nishio Station on the Meitetsu Nishio Line. From in front of the station, the Meitetsu Tōbu Kōtsū Bus on the Isshiki Line takes about 27 minutes to the Isshiki Sakana Hiroba and Sakushima ferry terminal. From Nagoya, Nishio Station is about an hour away by Meitetsu, so a day trip from Nagoya is comfortably possible. Cars cannot be brought onto the island, and most visitors get around on foot or by renting bicycles near the East or West ferry terminal.
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Get to Know
About Sakushima
Black-walled houses lining the village, art pieces standing alone in fields facing the sea, and the seafood of Mikawa Bay. Sakushima keeps the simplicity of a place not overly polished as a tourist spot, paired with the playful spirit of contemporary art. You can circle the island in half a day, but spending a full day cycling at a slow pace fits the scale better. As you walk around, small pieces tucked beside house walls or spheres lying in the fields make you pause more than once.
The Black-Walled Village
In the West District, the houses are defined by their walls coated in coal tar, jet black across every plank. It is an old practice for protecting the wooden buildings from the salty sea wind. When the paint starts to peel, the walls need to be repainted, but keeping that maintenance going on an island with so few residents is no small task.
Since 2003, the repainting has been carried out with help from volunteers based off the island, and the sight of people coating the walls black in summer has become one of the island's seasonal scenes. Late in the day, the dark planks soak up the western sun until they take on a soft sheen, and the shadows of the houses stretch long across the gravel paths.
An Island Shaped by Contemporary Art
Ohirune House (Nap House)
Sakushima earned its reputation as an art island in the late 1990s. The Matsuri-jima (Festival Island) Sakushima Revitalization Plan started things off, followed by projects such as Mikawa Sakushima Art Plan 21 and Sakushima Art Picnic. Today, around 20 permanent art pieces sit along the coast, in the fields, and beside vacant houses across the island.
The signature piece is Ohirune House by Minamikawa Yūki, standing on Ishigaki Beach. Inside the tall black box divided into nine compartments, you climb up by ladder, settle in, and find yourself framed within a window onto the sea and sky. The same artist's East House, a roughly 60-meter-long structure, runs along the East Port pier, so art greets you the moment you step off the boat.
Kaijin-sama and an Unexpected Resemblance to Chiikawa
On the grounds of Shōnenji Temple in the West District stands Kaijin-sama, the Sea God, a sculpture by Matsuoka Tōru. Although it was created as an art piece in the form of a fishing god, visitors keep leaving coin offerings. In late 2023, social media users began noticing that its round, yellow silhouette looks remarkably similar to Shima Jirō, the food-stall owner who appears in the Island Arc of the popular manga Chiikawa.
With the theatrical film Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of Mermaid Island scheduled to open in summer 2026, the figure has been drawing renewed attention from fans. The resemblance is purely coincidental, but walking the island and comparing the two, the worlds of the manga and the real place momentarily blur into each other. Smaller statues called bunshin also stand at Sakushima no Oniwa and at the parking lot of the West Ferry Terminal, so the same figure greets you several times as you make your way around the island.
Seafood and Island Cooking
Mikawa Bay has long been a productive fishing ground, and on Sakushima, fishing still supports daily life. The island's specialty is the ōasari clam, formally known as Uchimurasaki. It runs noticeably larger than the everyday asari clams used in Japanese home cooking.
Asari Donburi
At island restaurants, grilled ōasari and ōasari donburi are the go-to dishes, the donburi being a bowl of rice topped with fried clam cutlet bound in egg. The firm bite of the adductor muscle, the plump sweetness of the body, and the salty scent of the sea each carry their own character on the tongue. After a long walk, settling into a seaside dining spot with a mouthful of ōasari is one of the genuine pleasures of Sakushima.
