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Okinoshima Island: The Island You Cannot Visit, and How to Get Close

NOREN

Co-founder · NOREN

September 7, 2026

6 min read

About sixty kilometres off the coast of Munakata, north of Fukuoka, there is an island four kilometres around where no one lives and almost no one is allowed to land. Okinoshima was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2017, as the centre of the “Sacred Island of Okinoshima and Associated Sites in the Munakata Region.” It is the reason people search for Munakata at all. It is also the one place on the list you cannot go.

What the island is

Okinoshima is itself a shrine. For roughly five centuries, from the fourth century on, rituals were held on the island to pray for safe passage across the sea to the Korean peninsula and China, and the offerings were left where they were placed. Some 80,000 objects have been recovered — mirrors, gold rings, glass from as far as Persia — and all of them are designated National Treasures. The island is sometimes called the Shosoin of the sea, after the imperial treasure house in Nara.

Why it is closed

The whole island belongs to Munakata Taisha, the shrine that keeps it. Entry is forbidden to the general public; a priest lives on the island in rotation, and the old rules still hold — nothing may be taken from the island, and what is seen there is not to be spoken of. World Heritage status did not open the island. It confirmed that it would stay closed.

Three ways to get close

Hetsu-miya, on the mainland. Munakata Taisha is one shrine in three places, each dedicated to one of three goddesses. Hetsu-miya is the one you can walk into, about an hour from Hakata by train and bus. The museum on its grounds holds many of the National Treasures from the island.
Oshima Island. A 25-minute ferry, or a 15-minute passenger boat, from Konominato port. Nakatsu-miya, the second of the three shrines, is here, and on the island’s north coast is a place built for looking: the Okitsu-miya Yohaisho, where people have long worshipped Okinoshima from afar. On a clear day the island is visible on the horizon.