Japanese island hermit removed

The 82-year old Japanese hermit Nasafumi Nagasaki, living on a deserted island for 29 years, was first noted in this blog in March 2014. News.au.com is the first source with an update.

Nasafumi Nagasaki became famous as the “naked” hermit because the island of Sotobanri is deserted, and the loss of many of his possessions in a typhoon convinced him to go about without clothes. His intended two-year stay became 29 years. He received occasional visitors, chiefly curious Western media, and unknown friends bringing supplies, though he foraged and built his own homestead. In a visit, island-watcher Alvaro Cerezo learned from Nagasaki how passionate the latter was about staying on the island and dying there. Nagasaki told him: “In civilisation people treated me like an idiot and made me feel like one. On this island I don’t feel like that.” … “Here, on the island I don’t do what people tell me to do, I just follow nature’s rules. You can’t dominate nature so you have to obey it completely.”

But suddenly Nagasaki is no longer on his beloved island. He was apparently observed by an island passerby to be weak and sick and he was removed by authorities to the nearest city of Nishigaki, where he now lives in government housing. He was, perhaps, temporarily ill, but then fully recovered, nevertheless authorities will not allow him to return.

Multiple URLs use this original source: https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/naked-hermit-who-lived-on-deserted-island-for-thirty-years-captured-brought-back-to-civilisation/news-story/cb26d68f95f682f86e04d339e11e1541