Iki Island 3.31

Iki Island, or the Iki Archipelago is an archipelago in the Tsushima Strait, which is administered as the city of Iki in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. The islands have a total area of 138.46sqkm with a total population of 28,008. Only four of the 23 named islands are permanently inhabited. Together with the neighboring islands of Tsushima, they are collectively within the borders of the Iki–Tsushima Quasi-National Park.GeologyThe Iki Islands are volcanic in origin: they are the exposed and eroded basaltic summit of a massive Quaternary stratovolcano last active over 400,000 years ago. The northwest of the island is still has active onsen.Iki Island is slightly oval in shape, and measures approximately 17km from north-south and 14km from east-west. The highest elevation is Takenotsuji, a weakly curved peak with a highest elevation at 212.9m above sea level. The average height of the land surface is 100 meters above sea level.The archipelago is approximately 20km north-northeast of the Kyushu coast at its closest point and southeast of the Tsushima Islands.HistoryThe Iki Islands have been inhabited since the Japanese Paleolithic era, and numerous artifacts from the Jōmon, Yayoi and Kofun periods have been found by archaeologists, indicating continuous human occupation and activity. In the Chinese Wèizhì Wōrén chuán (Japanese 魏志倭人伝, Gishi Wajinden), part of the Records of the Three Kingdoms dating from the third century, mention is made of a country called “Iki”, (一支国, Iki-koku), located on an archipelago east of the Korean Peninsula. Archaeologists have tenatively identified this with the large Yayoi period settlement of Harunotsuji, one of the largest to have been discovered in Japan, where artifacts uncovered indicate a close contact with the Japanese islands and the Asian mainland.