By Maddy Morwood, ABC
Photo: Hitomi Sadasue / The Yomiuri Shimbun via AFP
Bursting with colour, edged with mountainous cliffs and nestled between Japan and the Korean Peninsula sits a sacred, World Heritage-listed "forbidden" island.
Okinoshima island is shrouded in taboos, rich in ancient treasures and boasts thousands of years of history.
It's also completely off-limits to women.
Deeply rooted in Shinto religious tradition, the 97-hectare island approximately 60 kilometres from Munakata city in Kyushu's Fukuoka Prefecture is one of very few locations in Japan that has been largely untouched since the ninth century.
Until 2017, only 200 men were permitted to visit the island for a single day each year for its annual On-Site Grand Festival.
The men had to observe strict religious prohibitions, said Miki Okadera of the secretariat of the Council for the Preservation and Utilisation of the Sacred Island of Okinoshima and Associated Sites in the Munakata Region.
She said they had to follow purification rituals performed naked in the waters surrounding the island upon landing, abide by the "Oiwazu-sama" taboo that forbids disclosing anything seen or heard on the island, and could not remove a single tree, blade of grass, or stone from the island.
Professor Simon Kaner is a member of the international expert panel that assessed Okinoshima's bid for World Heritage listing in 2017, and is one of only a handful of foreigners invited t
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