Does paradise need a parking lot? It takes 26 hours to get to Tokyo's farthest-flung suburbs, but if the travel and construction industries get their way, that could all change - Ogasawaras Islands, Japan

Japan, Inc., March, 2003 by Michael E. Stanley

IT GETS TIRESOME HEARING how "unique" Japan is; how the tea ceremony or the practice of Zen, for example, are parts of a special whole found only in this archipelago. So much of that "whole," like the tea ceremony and Zen, actually has roots elsewhere. Geographically, however, Japan is a one-off oddity, reaching from the cold, temperate climate of its northernmost isles to the bright, coral-girt islands at its far southern end. The nation's capital is even more unusual, having what is undoubtedly the world's most isolated suburb: Islands--some clothed hr tropical green, others bare and sere--scattered across the Pacific almost a thousand kilometers from the hustling, crowded warren of its downtown streets.

These islands, called the Ogasawaras, have tantalized developers for decades. Plans on the table would turn those isolated suburbs into Japan's very own Waikiki. But at what environmental cost? The answer to that question is being shaped right now.

When you think of the Ogasawara island chain, think of Bermuda as part and parcel of New York City, or of Madeira as a distant fragment of London; these comparisons pretty much convey the relationship--and contrast--between the monstrous grey metropolis of Tokyo and what is termed Ogasawara-mura--"Ogasawara village," Tokyo's farthest-flung suburb. This isolated "village"--actually an ecologically remarkable archipelago with an exotic history that at times seems straight out of a novel-consists of several clusters of volcanic islands and one small coral islet, all of which sit atop great peaks rising from the abyssal gloom of the Pacific's floor. Their distance from any other landmass has resulted in these islands being home to a menagerie of unique and unusual species; some Japanese naturalists refer to them as "Japan's own Galapagos."

The difficulty of access front Japan's main islands has so far kept the Ogasawara chain fairly safe from the construction industry juggernaut that has torn up and paved over much of Japan's landscape. But a treasure such as these islands is not easily ignored when there is money to be made, especially when the islands are an in-country paradise with much potential appeal to the travel-hungry populace of Japan.

A rich history

Ogasawara-mura includes several clusters of islands having a total land area of about 100 square kilometers, with the "traditional" Ogasawaras--often called the Bonin Islands in English--forming the largest group. To avoid confusion, let's use the term "Bonins" to refer to these islands specifically, and the term "Ogasawaras" to refer to all of these far bits of Tokyo taken together. The 30 or so Bonin Islands (depending on the chartmaker's whim, sometimes a rock is a small island or a small island is a rock/ are just slightly east of a line drawn due south from Tokyo. They were thrust up from the bowels of the Pacific's bottom some 3 million years ago and have existed in isolation ever since. All species that exist on them rode the wind or waves from somewhere else.

These islands were originally covered with a thick subtropical rain forest, a rich ecosystem that provided countless ecological niches for arriving species to exploit. This resulted in a profusion of plant and small animal species found here and nowhere else. Alas, many of these have already disappeared; many more are threatened. Two of these islands, Chichijima ("Father Island") and Hahajima ("Mother Island" J are inhabited, with a total population of just over 2,500. Although they are part of Tokyo, the weekly 26-hour sea voyage that the journey requires means that it takes longer to get from downtown Tokyo to the Ogasawaras than it does to go from Tokyo to just about any other city in the world.

Archaeological remains found in the Bonins and in the Volcano Islands have shown that an ancient Oceanic race once inhabited some of these islands. A Chinese chronicle of the third century, the Wei Zhi, mentions a "black-teethed people" living on islands far to the south of the islands of Wa, as Japan was then known. Blackening of the teeth was a Micronesian custom that survived into the 20th century, and the Chinese reference may be the earliest record of the Ogasawaras and the only record of the ancient inhabitants, who disappeared for unknown reasons some centuries ago.

The islands lay apparently uninhabited and unvisited until the 16th century, when they were first sighted by a wayward Spanish explorer in 1543 and christened the Arzobispo Islands. The explorer, concerned about his overstretched supplies of food and water, declined to land. It does sound a hit odd--a hit like saying that being really thirsty means you shouldn't have a drink of water--considering that such high, forested islands usually have fresh water in abundance. Exactly 50 years later, the Japanese warlord Ogasawara Sadayori was recorded as having discovered these islands after sailing south from the Izu Peninsula. He was completely unaware of the Spanish sighting. The single source for this discovery, however, seems somewhat doubtful. The first Japanese ashore may well have been some off-course Japanese traders carrying a shipload of mikan oranges, who were stranded on the islands after a shipwreck in 1670. There was a further Japanese expedition in 1675. These landings would help confirm Japanese ownership of the islands in years to come.