SagiWiki / さぎウィキ¶
"Everything we know about Sagishima organized in a legible way." (Studio X Proposal)
SagiWiki is the canonical home for all Sagishima knowledge. It collects what we know about the island itself, independent of RDS but the ground on which RDS stands. The Theory of Change reminds us that the single best proxy for RDS's success is attendance at the 6:30am Sunoue Radio Taiso: a measure of community health and integration with the island.
Wiki structure (scaffolded 2026-06-01; renamed to SagiWiki 2026-06-02)¶
This folder is a topic-per-page wiki that renders as a website via MkDocs (config at ../mkdocs.yml; mkdocs serve from the repo root). Start at 00_Overview.md; read _meta/conventions.md before adding pages. Sagishima imagery lives canonically in _assets/.
| Category | Landing page | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | 00_Overview.md |
Island at a glance; the front page |
| Place | Geography | Geography, hydrology, districts, ports, maps |
| History | Timeline | Premodern to present; the timeline |
| People | Demographics | Demographics, residents (Isso), families |
| Built Environment | Kakumeisha | Kakumeisha, the houses, gymnasium, akiya |
| Culture & Ritual | Radio Taiso | Festival year, Ke/Hare, Radio Taiso, 88+α, ceremonies |
| Land & Food | Agriculture Today | Current island agriculture (citrus, melons, the asparagus revitalization) |
| Land & Food | Historical Agriculture | How Sagishima farmed: heritage staples, salt, livestock, tools |
| Research (Foundation wiki) | Sagishima Data Project ↗ | RDS's research about the island; moved to the Foundation wiki |
| Neighbors & Region | Neighbors and Region | The island's regional ties (Onomichi, neighboring islands). RDS's partnerships moved to the Foundation wiki |
| References & Media | The Naked Island | Naked Island, cartographers, the view from elsewhere |
| _meta | conventions | Conventions + the live open-questions tracker |
| _sources | bibliography | The bibliography and note.com journal index |
Most pages are stubs awaiting content. The Sagishima_Compendium.md remains the curated long-form narrative; the wiki pages are the granular, living layer that grows as information is gathered. The notes below ("What this folder should eventually contain") were the pre-wiki taxonomy and are retained as a checklist of target content.
Files (legacy index)¶
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
Sagishima_Compendium.md + .docx |
The depth-2 companion to the Welcome doc. What you read after some time on the island, when you want to learn the layers below the operational surface. Covers geography, demographics (579 residents, 70.6% aged 65+, average age 68), districts, Kakumeisha's full history (1949 building, 1875 educational lineage, donated by Isso), the akiya context, the 88+α Ohenro, festival year, Radio Taiso, agriculture (including the active artichoke-introduction project), the Thirsty Island hydrological question, the formal partnerships with Mihara City (Feb 27 2024) and Hiroshima University. Pulls together the four note.com/reddotschool blog posts that ground these facts in primary sources. |
88 Plus Alpha_Rally.docx |
Notes on the island's 88+α Ohenro pilgrimage, a miniature version of Shikoku's 88 sacred sites scattered across Sagishima as small stone alcoves. Includes a tabletop/digital game idea: a rubbing-rally book that culminates in a shrine ceremony, with a gilded artichoke charm as reward (charm motif draws from the active RDS artichoke-introduction project, not from existing island tradition). |
What this folder should eventually contain¶
Island fundamentals¶
- Geography: 8.72 km² (~3.37 sq mi), perimeter 18.2 km, per official figures (Japanese Wikipedia, matching the Old Home page). Resolved: the "6.3 sq mi / ~16.3 km²" on the Sagishima Data Project and /our-studios pages was a unit error (the live RDS site even prints the self-contradictory "6.3 square miles (8.72 km²)"). Seto Naikai (inland sea), Mihara City, Hiroshima Prefecture.
- Population: converges on ~580–600 for 2023 (579 note.com; 596 official via Wikipedia, 71.08% aged 65+). The older ~650 seen on some pages is rounded or earlier. Peak ~3,600 in 1955; the island has shrunk roughly 84% since.
- Access: bullet train + ferry from Tokyo Station in under 5 hours
- Akiya rate: ~30%+ of houses dormant (Theory of Change material list); Old Home page says "nearly half" vacant
- Hydrology: Sagishima was historically self-sufficient until a mainland water pipeline arrived ~1950s–60s. Landslide vulnerability correlates with formerly-farmed terrain now lightly reforested with poplar or bamboo. (Source: SDP / Thirsty Island sub-project.)
Industries: historical and current¶
Historical (pre-decline): wooden boat-building, family farms, fisheries.
Current small-scale agriculture (per Old Home page): citrus varieties, vegetables, flowers, salt, seaweed.
Forward-looking RDS introduction projects: artichoke cultivation (see Note on artichokes elsewhere in this folder).
Island culture and traditions¶
- The 88+α Ohenro pilgrimage (covered in 88 Plus Alpha_Rally.docx; also one of the four sub-projects of the Sagishima Data Project)
- Sunoue Township's Obon dance music and choreography (per Theory of Change Archive)
- Existing agricultural specialties (TBD: citrus is common in the Seto Naikai region; Sagishima had intensive historical cultivation per Kaneto Shindo's 1960 film The Naked Island. The Thirsty Island sub-project is documenting historical agriculture systematically.)
- The RDS artichoke-introduction project: artichokes are not currently grown on Sagishima or commonly in Japan; RDS is actively working to bring artichoke culture to the island and to Japan more broadly. (Catalog separately from existing island tradition; this is forward-looking RDS work, not heritage.)
- The 6:30am Radio Taiso (RDS's chosen external goal metric)
- Local slang words; planting seasons; how to peel a persimmon properly (per Theory of Change Archive)
- Haiku composition (Isso's specialty)
- Ke / Hare cosmology: the Sagishima Data Project's Infinite Matsuri sub-project frames the island in terms of Ke (日常, ordinary daily life) vs Hare (非日常, festival/ceremony mode). Useful interpretive frame for community-engagement design.
Cultural / media references about Sagishima¶
- Kaneto Shindo (新藤兼人), director of The Naked Island (裸の島, 1960), which opens with aerial footage of Sagishima's intensive historical cultivation
- Hatsusaburo Yoshida (吉田初三郎), 1924 Japanese panoramic cartographer; reference for the SDP digital twin's representational approach
Ritual & ceremonial context (Japanese, relevant to RDS work)¶
- Jichinsai (地鎮祭): Shinto ground-breaking ceremony performed before construction. RDS's deconstruction work is framed as a ritual inversion of jichinsai: closing rather than opening; releasing rather than claiming. The deconstruction ceremony developed by GAFRAB studios (regalia, graphic language, spatiotemporal program) is the formal expression of this inversion. Useful frame for any community-facing material about why RDS treats deconstruction as ritual.
Sunoue Township specifics¶
- Sunoue Gymnasium (RDS uses it as salvage warehouse/workshop/gallery)
- Sunoue Elementary School & Gymnasium (for sale from the city; acquisition opportunity)
- Sagiura Elementary School (currently operating; RDS curriculum collaboration; ~25 students)
Built environment¶
- Kakumeisha (oldest standing public structure on island; RDS schoolhouse)
- 1960s aerial photos of the island (in the RDS Archive)
Demographics & economy¶
- Aging population, youth migration to cities
- Economic role of agriculture
- Tourism (currently low; the proposal raises whether to promote it)
- Local government: City of Mihara; Mayor Yoshihiro Okada (attended 2023 studio)
The Isso-San Anthropology initiative (⚡️ Critical, May 2026)¶
Studio X Other Thoughts (May 2026) flags Kawamoto Yoshishige (Isso, 河本義成) as RDS's single most important resource for island knowledge, and proposes placing a fellow trained in anthropology / journalism / oral history to work closely with him and record his vast knowledge. Time horizon: Isso is in his 50s–60s, bounded but not immediate urgency.
This initiative lives in the 🟥 Square pedagogical bucket (anthropology / oral history / civic). It is the most concrete near-term Sagishima documentation project the Foundation has on its plate, and a natural sister to the Sagishima Data Project's Infinite Matsuri sub-project (Hare/Ke representation of the island).
See /memory/project_critical_initiatives_may_2026.md for full context.
Connection to the Sagishima Data Project¶
A substantial fraction of "what is known about Sagishima inside RDS" is held in the Sagishima Data Project: a multi-year research initiative documented in ../Audit_RDS/05_Output_and_Impact/Sagishima_Data_Project.md. Four sub-projects:
- The Thirsty Island: water systems history and hydrodynamic modeling
- 88 Plus Alpha: the pilgrimage-route alcoves (overlaps with the file in this folder)
- Infinite Matsuri: the Ke/Hare festival-mode representation
- The Digital Twin proper: Certain Measures provides the technical platform
For most island-knowledge questions, the SDP dataset is the answer-of-first-resort.
Why this matters for RDS¶
Theory of Change External Goal C makes attendance at Radio Taiso the canonical measure of whether RDS is integrated with the island vs. happening to be on it. The Constitutional Outline §7 (Community) will need to encode commitments to: - Open lectures, restoration projects, employment of local people - Use of local materials and suppliers - Transparent communication - Language commitments - Not displacing community life (physical footprint, tourism, housing impacts)