Ogasawara Islands

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  • Other Names: Bonin Islands
  • Japanese: 小笠原諸島 (Ogasawara shotou)

The Ogasawara Islands, also known as the Bonin Islands, are a group of small islands administratively governed as part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture, but located in the Pacific Ocean, a considerable distance from "mainland" Japan. Originally settled by a diverse mix of White Americans, Native Hawaiians, and others, and claimed by the United Kingdom and United States in the early 19th century after being previously discovered but not settled by Japanese sailors in the 17th century, the islands were officially incorporated into Japanese territory in the late 19th century.

The island group was historically often known as the Bonin Islands in English; this derived from the Japanese term bunin or mujin 無人, meaning "uninhabited."

Geography

The Ogasawara Islands consist of a group of islands known as Chichijima, Hahajima, Anijima, and Otôtojima (literally, "father island," "mother island," "big brother island," and "little brother island"), surrounded by a number of smaller islets, plus, at some distance to the south, Iwo Jima (J: Iôtô).

History

The crew of a trading ship which blew off-course sometime around 1669-1675 were perhaps the first Japanese to set foot on the islands. Their eventual return to Edo reportedly became well-known enough, or talked about enough, that Dutch physician Engelbert Kaempfer heard about it roughly twenty years later, and wrote about it in his diary.[1] An expedition already planned by the Tokugawa shogunate since 1669 then traveled there in 1675, led by Shimaya Ichizaemon, and brought back a number of exotic items, including aromatic woods and new species of birds.[1]

A map dedicated to describing the Ogasawaras was included by Hayashi Shihei in his 1785 Sangoku tsûran zusetsu, a set of maps of Ezo, Korea, the Ryukyu Islands, the Ogasawaras, and the region overall.[2]

Commodore Matthew Perry visited the Ogasawaras from June 9 to 30, 1854, during his second journey to Japan & Ryukyu, and claimed the islands on behalf of the United States. During his time there, on June 14, Perry purchased land from a man named Nathaniel Savory on what the residents then called Peel Island; this largest island in the group is today known as Chichijima.[3]

The United Kingdom officially claimed the islands in 1827. A new group of some thirty American settlers (incl. a number of Native Hawaiians and/or other Pacific Islanders) arrived on the island in the summer of 1830.

The British government quietly gave up its claims to the Ogasawara Islands in 1875; the Meiji government officially declared the Ogasawara Islands to be Japanese territory the following year.

Though initially grouped in with the Ryukyu Islands as territories not immediately restored to Japanese administration with the end of the Allied Occupation in 1952, the Ogasawaras were restored to Japanese administration soon afterwards.[4]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Radu Leca, “Stripes and Feathers: Trade and the Spatial Imaginary in Late Seventeenth-Century Japan,” Japanese Art – Transcultural Perspectives, ed. Melanie Trede, Christine Guth, and Mio Wakita, Brill Pub. (2025), p183.
  2. Hayashi Shihei. Sangoku tsûran zusetsu. Edo, 1785. University of Hawaii Hamilton Library Sakamaki-Hawley Collection. HW 552-553.
  3. Ishin Shiryô Kôyô 維新史料綱要, vol 1 (1937), pp412-414.
  4. Gallery labels, Okinawa Peace Memorial Museum, Itoman, Okinawa.