
In 2019, as Japan transitioned from the Heisei era to Reiwa, a hidden chapter unfolded on Sarubotoke, a secluded island in the Seto Inland Sea. This island has long thrived as a secret haven for prostitution, overseen since the Showa era by the powerful Futatsuguri family. Meanwhile, four strange individuals have emerged from the shadows of society, drawn to the island for mysterious reasons. Embedded within both the island’s ruling family and these newcomers are sorcerers who practice an undetectable form of murder: the art of killing with curses. As dark ambitions and human plots weave together on this island of vice, an even darker force broods beneath the surface—a sinister curse that has haunted Sarubotoke Island for nearly seven decades, a legacy of the island’s war-ridden past.
Ouju no Shima is a Japanese visual novel of 552,300 characters, with 18,639 unique words and 2,616 different kanji. Its difficulty rating on Jiten is hard, 3.5 out of 5. The full vocabulary list ranks all 18,639 words by how often they appear, and you can study them on Jiten or download them as an Anki deck.
Here are some of the words that appear most often in this media, as well as a sample of its rarer vocabulary.