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

While there was considerable resistance from groups concerned with the environmental aspects of the development, the bursting of the bubble in the early 1990s pulled the funding rug out from under the airport project. It has been resurrected several times since; the most recent was the proposal to build it on uninhabited Anijima, which is across a narrow channel from Chichijima. The project would require the leveling of several small mountains, the filling of adjacent valleys and the construction of a suspended funicular ropeway to carry passengers across the channel to Chichijima--this in a latitude where typhoons are far from rare. One wonders how much homework the proposers really did. An environmental impact study found a whole complex of endangered species at the site, and in 1996, the idea died. But some ideas that are still on the table may indeed be workable and have an initially minimal ecological impact. These include a large, high-speed ferry vessel; commuter flights from Hachijojima (the southernmost of the inhabited Izu islands to the north that could land at a now disused site of a World War 11 Japanese fighter airstrip; revival of a commercial flying boat service (Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force is the last navy to use flying boats--these are built by a Japanese manufacturer; the use of the large military airfield on Ioh Toh as a transit facility between incoming midsize jetliners and smaller commuter aircraft connecting to Chichijima; and the construction of a floating facility. However, in the contemporary Japanese construction world, each of these is a radical, "outside the box" kind of idea. Adherence to orthodoxy in such things is virtually a way of life for Japanese officialdom. It is a certainty that something will eventually be built, but what happens once easier access is established: Over 90% of the Bonins are bona fide National Park territory, but that fact seems to be infinitely malleable: The original large-scale airport project for Anijima was proposed even though the whole island is within those National Park boundaries. Given the high degree of upper-level cronyism in the Japanese governmental and business systems, it is easy to see that such "exceptions" could be served up by the basketful. We can only hope that the world will at some point take notice of the Ogasawaras and the challenge they pose. With enough of the world watching and kibitzing, Japan just might be forced to live up to the tatemae love of nature that it so loudly professes. The Ogasawaras present a real chance to live up to the image cultivated in Japan's cultural propaganda. Let us hope that there are some who are willing to take it.

Michael E. Stanley is a freelance photographer and writer based in Chiba and a frequent contributor to J@pan Inc.