Studies on island tourism, especially on areal development have been accumulated. As many of these studies in Japan are based on case studies aiming to introduce ideal tourism development to tourism developing islands, their main research objects are areas but not tourists. This study intended to clarify transition of tourist attractions and to analyze recent tourist behaviors on Okunoshima. The beginning of tourism on the island was in 1963, when a national hotel Kyukamura Okunoshima was opened. Until the early 1980’s, the main tourist attractions had been leisure facilities of Kyukamura and island’s nature. In 1988, when the poison gas museum was opened, archaeological tourism added to one of the main tourist attractions on the island. Along with the increase of rabbits on the island, tourists increased to meet and feed hundreds of rabbits. Then media and SNS ignited rabbit island boom. It is notorious that transition of tourist attractions caused by social trends of the moment, but the recent cause highly depends on information like SNS. The author analyzed 413 reviews, in which written in Japanese 214 and in English 189, on a travel website, Tripadvisor. The main tourist behavior on this island is interacting rabbits. Whereas rabbits attract lots of tourists, some environmental issues are clarified, such as overcrowded rabbits and tourists, increased injured and diseased rabbits. Other than rabbits, the poison gas museum and beautiful landscape on the island are also highly estimated especially by foreign tourists. To sustain the island tourism, diversification of tourist behaviors and limiting the number of tourists will be inevitable on Okunoshima.
