Sotobanari

Sotobanari (Image courtesy of National Land Image Information (Color Aerial Photographs), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism)

Sotobanari (also Sotobakuri, Japanese 外離島) is one of the Yaeyama Islands, within the Sakishima Islands, at the southern end of the Ryukyu Islands. It is administered as part of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Its nearest large neighbour is Iriomote.

The small island (about 1 km in diameter), whose name means outer distant island, is vegetated, but has no running water. Sotobanari has one human inhabitant, a seventy-six-year-old man named Masafumi Nagasaki, who has lived there in semi-isolation for two decades.