The island where cats outnumber people

Aoshima is a small island in Ehime Prefecture, in Japan's Seto Inland Sea, that has attracted visitors from around the world for years with an unusual feature: its feline population far outnumbers the human one. The ratio is around ten cats per person, and during peak tourist season the number of visitors can triple the permanent residents. The island has neither hotels nor shops, but its reputation as "neko shima" — cat island — put it on the global map.

Cats originally arrived, as in many Japanese fishing islands, to control the mouse population that threatened food stores and fishermen's nets. They fulfilled that purpose well and, as the human population aged and emigrated to the mainland throughout the 20th century, the cats gradually became the protagonists of the landscape. The process repeated itself on several Japanese islands, such as Tashirojima in Miyagi or Ainoshima in Fukuoka, creating a spontaneous tourism phenomenon.

The popularity of Aoshima on the internet drove visits to levels that residents — a group of elderly people living from fishing and subsistence farming — found difficult to manage. Images of dozens of cats waiting for the tourist ferry circulated on social media worldwide. The phenomenon raised a real tension: the island retains its character precisely because it has few tourist facilities, but visitor demand pushes towards infrastructure that would transform it.