History
It is uncertain as to when the islands were discovered; they are mentioned in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki.
Already under the Nara period the islands were used as an exile for persons from the mainland.
From the Kamakura period the islands were administrated as "Oki no kuni" (Oki Province) and primarily governed by the shugo (governor) from Izumo Province.
In 1198 Emperor Go-Toba (tennō) was sent to exile to Dōgo where he stayed until his death in 1239. Between 1331 and 1333 tennō Go-Daigo was exiled to Nishino-shima.
From the Muromachi period the islands were ruled successively by the Sasaki clan, the Yamana clan and the Kyogoku clan until the Amago clan to the Sengoku period.
Under the Edo period the Tokugawa family took control over the islands and they were put under the direct control of the Shogun through a governor. Later they became part of the Matsue Domain. During that time the islands were a stopover point for trading boats traveling to and from Asia.
After the Meiji Restoration which introduced a succession of reforms to restructure the Japanese state, the islands first became part of the Tottori Prefecture in 1871 and were transferred to the Shimane Prefecture in 1881.
On October 1, 2004, the town of Saigō and the villages of Fuse, Goka and Tsuma were administratively merged into the town of Okinoshima even though the townships still exist as separate towns.
Read more about this topic: Oki Islands
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)