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

In 1785, a map of Japan showed the "Ogasawara Burin-To" as a part of Greater Japan. But by that time, Japan had turned inward, effectively sealing itself off from the rest of the world, and long-distance voyages became in most cases a capital crime.

Word of these islands leaked out to Europe through the tiny Dutch trading enclave at Nagasaki, and by the early 19th century, American and European vessels had landed in the Bonins. Whaling ships began to call at the islands for fresh water and to lay in rich larder from the astronomical numbers of birds and sea turtles found there. If only that Spanish captain had known of the abundant food and water! Had he landed and claimed the group for Spain, history in this corner of Japan might have taken a very different turn. One of the visiting ships landed some pigs, so as to provide a future meat supply. The population of these marooned animals exploded, and their omnivorous rapacity ensured that anything that might become swine fodder was in danger. The decline of the Bonins' rich endemic heritage began with those released pigs.

In 1830, a mixed group--two Americans, one Briton, one Italian, one Dane fall men) and 15 Hawaiians (both men and women)--arrived to found a small colony. Later arrivals added to the mix. This small community took root and grew, and only discovered that they were living on Japanese territory in the 1860s, as Japan shook off its feudalism and emerged into the modern world. Japanese settlers arrived to found their own colony, and the two coexisted side by side and in some ways began to coalesce. The original settlers were given Japanese citizenship in 1877, and as the 19th century drew to a close, the islands became a part of Tokyo.

The price of progress

As the population grew into the thousands, the ancient forests were sheared off the islands slopes--the greater portion in less than a decade--and commercial agricultural development proceeded apace. Turtles and birds were slaughtered in huge numbers, and the rate of extinction among the other unique species of flora and fauna accelerated. Today, tiny remnants of that original forest cover survive only in the farthest and most inaccessible ravines. The land cleared for agriculture has gone wild again; there is no commercial agriculture anywhere in the Ogasawaras, except for small-scale experimental patches of coffee and sugar cane. Cabbages and tomatoes and bean sprouts ride the weekly ship from Tokyo, along with beer and noodles and rice. While the lush and beautiful secondary forest growth of these islands today is only a pale shadow of what once was, it is still a wonder to behold. There are 73 species of endemic trees, 82 species of endemic land snails and 236 species of insects found nowhere else in the world. Some of these species exist in tiny microenvironments and cannot survive anywhere else.

Japanese-style intensive development was the order of the day until World War II, when the islands held thousands of Japanese troops. With the exception of 80 able-bodied adult men, who were drafted as laborers, the civilian population of just over 7,700--the great majority form Chichijima and Hahajima--was relocated to mainland Japan.