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| Women are not permitted to visit this sacred island in Japan. |
A men-only island
in Japan where women are banned and male visitors must bathe naked in the sea
before visiting its shrine, has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The tiny landmass
of Okinoshima is permanently manned by a Shinto priest who prays to the
island's goddess, in a tradition that has been kept up for centuries.
Limited numbers
are permitted to land on the island in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) this year it
was 200 for a yearly festival that lasts just two hours, but they must adhere
to strict rules.
Most importantly,
they must be men, but they must also strip off and take a purifying dip in the
ocean before they are allowed to set foot on the sacred ground of the shrine.
Despite its
inscription on UNESCO's World Heritage list often the prelude to a leap in
tourist numbers shrine officials say they are now considering banning future
travel for anyone apart from priests, partly out of fears the island could be
"destroyed" by too many visitors.
"The island
has sometimes been said to ban women, but in principle anyone but the priests
who pray there for 365 days a year is barred from entering," said a
spokesman.
The ban on female
visitors specifically "has nothing to do with discrimination against
women," the official told AFP by phone.
It is considered
dangerous for women to travel by sea to get to the island and the shrine will
not change the centuries-old rule, he said.
"It is meant
to protect women, the birth-giving gender," he added.
The island, which
sits off the northwest coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main
islands, was an important window for foreign trade in Japan since ancient
times, forming part of a trade route that linked the archipelago to the Korean
peninsula and China.
Thousands of gold
rings and other valuable items have been found there.
"These
treasures are believed to have been offered to the gods in order to pray for
national prosperity and the safety of marine traffic," says the website of
Munakata Taisha, the shrine which owns Okinoshima.
UNESCO's heritage
committee considered 33 sites for the prestigious status at its annual
gathering in Poland.
On Sunday it also
accepted Taputapuatea, a portion of the "Polynesian Triangle" in the
South Pacific thought to be the last part of the globe settled by humans, to
the list.
It also added
Britain's Lake District muse for artists from William Wordsworth to Beatrix
Potter and the Valongo wharf in Rio de Janeiro where slaves from Africa first
arrived in Brazil.
UNESCO's World
Heritage list includes over 1,000 sites, monuments and natural phenomena that
are of "outstanding universal value" to humankind.
It includes
treasures such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Taj Mahal in India, and
the rock-carved city of Petra in modern-day Jordan.
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