SADO

Sado Island is the second largest island in the Japanese Sea after Okinawa Island. It has an area of about 855 km2 and a coastline of about 280 km, and is located about 32 km across the Sado Strait from Cape Kakuda (Niigata City) on the opposite shore of the mainland, the closest point to Sado. Sado is bordered by the Osado Mountains in the north and the Kosado production area in the south, and the Kuninaka Plain in the center is a granary. The island is a microcosm of Japan in terms of topography, with sea, mountains, plains, rivers, and lakes. Blessed with such geographical conditions, Sado has a long history. The Iwayayama Grotto (designated as a prefectural historic site) is a Jomon-era cave site located on a 90-meter-high terrace at the tip of the Ogi Peninsula in the south of Sado Island. Artifacts excavated from this site indicate that people already lived here about 8,000 years ago. 

Discoveries unearthed from ruins indicate that Sado Island has been inhabited since 10,000 years ago.

In a Japanese creation myth found in the oldest history book Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters), Sado appears as the seventh island of a Japan consisting of many islands. In the same creation myth found in the Nihonshoki (Chronicles of Japan), the Island of Sado is fifth to appear, along with its twin fellow, the Island of Oki.

Sado was already one of the independent provinces that comprised Japan in the Nara Period (late 6th Century to early 7th Century), and was designated an island of exile. Until medieval times, many court nobles and intellectuals who lost in politics were exiled to Sado. Exiles incude Hozumi Asomioyu in 722, a poet who criticised the imperial family, Emperor Juntoku in 1221 who lost the Jokyu Disturbance, a Buddhist monk Nichiren in 1271, who criticised the Kamakura Shogunate and other schools of Buddhism, and Zeami in 1434, a Noh actor and playwright who incurred the shogun’s wrath.As seen in the Tales of Times Now Past written in the late Heian Period (late 12th century), 

Sado was known as an island that produced gold. Recognising its potential, Ieyasu Tokugawa, a shogun, promoted development of gold and silver mines by placing Sado under the direct control of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Gold and silver produced on Sado underpinned the finances of the shogunate.