A naked hermit who's been living alone on a Japanese desert island for 29 years has been returned to
- An 82-year-old desert islander has been forced to return to Japanese mainland due to ill health.
- Masafumi Nagasaki has been living on Sotobanari island for almost 30 years.
- He is the longest lasting voluntary castaway alive.
- It is reportedly unlikely Nagasaki will be able to return to the island.
For almost 30 years, Masafumi Nagasaki has been living in near-total isolation.
Now 82 years of age, Nagasaki has been removed from his home after becoming the longest lasting voluntary castaway alive
For decades, he was the sole inhabitant of Sotobanari island in Japan's tropical Okinawa prefecture. The kidney-shaped island is rarely visited by even fisherman, who avoid the dangerous currents that surround it.
Alvaro Cerezo, who travels the world documenting isolationists like Nagasaki, reported his eviction on his site Docastaway.
Cerezo had spent 5 days with the Japanese castaway soon before he was taken away.
"He was kicked out of the island, someone saw him on the island and it seems like he was weak," Cerezo told news.com.au.
"They called the police and they took him back to civilisation and that's it. He couldn't even fight back because he was weak. They won't allow him to return."
"His health is OK, he was probably only sick or had the flu [when he was taken] but they won't allow him to go back any more, he cannot go there, it's over."
Nagasaki was previously a photographer and reportedly ran a hostess club in Niigata but "he doesn't like to talk about his past," Cerezo says.
He decided to pack his bags and move to Sobotanari, which means "Outer Distant island" in the local dialect.
Since then, he's been living by nature's rules on the island, which is just 1,000 metres across and has no natural water.
"I don't do what society tells me, but I do follow the rules of the natural world. You can't beat nature so you just have to obey it completely," he said.
"That's what I learned when I came here, and that's probably why I get by so well."
Nagasaki spends most of his time without clothes on, saying it feels "out of place" to do so on the island paradise. He does don some garments for a weekly trip to a nearby settlement, where he buys food and drinking water.
The hermit refuses to eat meat or fish, instead opting for boiled rice cakes when he gets hungry.
Nagasaki had hoped to die on the island, he told Reuters in 2012: "Finding a place to die is an important thing to do, and I've decided here is the place for me."
"It hadn't really occurred to me before how important it is to choose the place of your death, like whether it's in a hospital or at home with family by your side. But to die here, surrounded by nature - you just can't beat it, can you?"
Unfortunately, the 82-year-old's condition means his days of island life are at an end. "Sadly, last month the Japanese authorities forced Nagasaki to go to a hospital with no hope of returning to his island," Cerezo wrote in his blog. "His dream days in the paradise are over."
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