The Bonin Islands, also known as the , are a Japanese archipelago of over 30 subtropical and tropical islands located around SSE of Tokyo and northwest of Guam. The group as a whole has a total area of but only two of the islands are permanently inhabited, Chichijima and Hahajima. Together, their population was 2,560 as of 2021. Administratively, Tokyo's Ogasawara Subprefecture also includes the settlements on the Volcano Islands and the Self-Defense Force post on Iwo Jima. The seat of government is Chichijima.
Because of the Bonins' isolation, many of their animals and plants have undergone unique evolutionary processes. They have been referred to as the "Galápagos of the Orient" and were named a Natural World Heritage Site in 2011. When first reached during the early modern period, the islands were entirely uninhabited, although subsequent research has found evidence of some prehistoric habitation by Micronesians. Upon their repeated rediscoveries, the islands were largely ignored by the Spanish, Dutch, and isolationist Japanese until finally being claimed by a passing British captain in 1827. American, European, and Hawaiian colonists arrived from the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1830. Subsequently, Meiji Japan successfully colonized and reclaimed the islands in 1875, but Bonin Islanders' community continued up to World War II, when most islanders were forcibly relocated to Honshu. Following Japan's defeat, the US Navy occupied the island, bulldozing existing Japanese homes and restricting resettlement until full control of the Bonins was returned to Japan in 1968. Ethnically, the island is now majority Japanese but remains unusually diverse, which is reflected in the local Creole language known as Bonin English. Improved transportation has made agriculture more profitable and encouraged tourism, but the development required for an airport remains a contentious local issue.
Names
The name Bonin comes from an 1817 article in the French by Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat in whichamong various other misunderstandings of his source materialhe misread a description of the islands as uninhabited (, "desert island[s]") for their actual name, used the wrong reading of the characters ( for ), and then transcribed the resulting reading incorrectly into French as , which eventually lost its original hyphen.
The name Ogasawara (, ) literally means "little hat-shaped field(s)" but is used for the islands in honor of Ogasawara Sadayori (), a supposed ancestor of the ronin Ogasawara Sadatō () fictitiously credited with the discovery of the chain. Within Japanese, the Bonins proper are known as the "Ogasawara Islands" or "Group" (, ) while the "Ogasawara Islands" or "Archipelago" (, Ogasawara-shotō) is a wider term including the other islands of the Ogasawara Municipality (, Ogasawara-mura) and its coterminous Ogasawara Subprefecture (, Ogasawara-shichō)namely, the Volcano Islands and three remote islands of Nishinoshima, Minamitorishima, and Okinotorishima. These islands are parts of Japan's Nanpō Islands.
The islands were also formerly known to Europeans as the Archbishop Islands (), probably in honor of Pedro Moya de Contreras, archbishop of Mexico and viceroy of New Spain, who sent an expedition to the area in the late 16th century.
History
Prehistory At the end of the 20th century, prehistoric tools and carved stones were discovered on North Iwo Jima and Chichijima, establishing that the islands were previously home to at least some members of an unknown Micronesian people..
Early modern period The first recorded visit by Europeans to the islands happened on 2 October 1543, when the Spanish explorer Bernardo de la Torre on the San Juan sighted Haha-jima, which he charted as Forfana. The islands were uninhabited at that time. Japanese discovery of the islands occurred in Kanbun 10 (1670) and was followed by a shogunate expedition in Enpō 3 (1675).Tanaka, Hiroyuki (1993). "Edo Jidai ni okeru Nihonjin no Mujin Tou (Ogasawara Tou) ni tai-suru Ninshiki" ("The Ogasawara Islands in Tokugawa Japan"). Kaiji Shi Kenkyuu(Journal of the Maritime History). No. 50, June, 1993. The islands were then referred to as , literally "the uninhabited islands". Shimaya Ichizaemon, the explorer at the order of the shogunate, inventoried several species of trees and birds, but after his expedition, the shogunate abandoned any plans to develop the remote islands.
The first published description of the islands in the West was brought to Europe by Isaac Titsingh in 1796. His small library of Japanese books included by Hayashi Shihei.WorldCat, Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu; alternate romaji Sankoku Tsūran Zusetsu This book, which was published in Japan in 1785,Cullen, Louis M. (2003). briefly described the Ogasawara Islands.Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. (1998).
These groups were collectively called the Archbishop Islands in Spanish sources of the 18th–19th century, most likely due to an expedition organized by Pedro Moya de Contreras, archbishop of Mexico and viceroy of New Spain, to explore the northern Pacific and the islands of Japan. Its main objective was to find the long sought but legendary islands of Rica de Oro ("Rich in Gold"), Rica de Plata ("Rich in Silver"), and the Islas del Armenio ("Islands of the Armenian"). After several years of planning and frustrated initial attempts, the expedition finally set sail on 12 July 1587, commanded by Pedro de Unamuno. Even if it did revisit the Daitō Islands, already charted by Bernardo de la Torre in 1543, the expedition could not find the wanted islands after searching the positions where they were charted in contemporary references. Japanese maps at the time seem to have been rather inaccurate, to the point that some contemporaries considered them to have been deliberately misleading to discourage colonization attempts by foreign nations. Frederick William Beechey used the Spanish name as late as 1831, believing that the Japanese "Boninsima" were entirely different islands.
19th century On 12 September 1824, American Captain James Coffin in the whaler first visited the southern group of islands (Coffin Islands). He revisited the archipelago in 1825, but this time, he arrived at the middle group of islands (Beechey Group).
In September 1825, the British whaling ship Supply landed in the southern Bailey Group of islands. In 1826, another British whaler, William, arrived at Beechey Island. Whaling ships called regularly for water and turtles before continuing their voyages.The National Cyclopaedia of Useful Knowledge, Vol.II,, (1847) London, Charles Knight, p.205.
In 1827, Captain F. W. Beechey of reached the island chain and claimed them as a British possession. A copper plate was removed from Blossoms hull and left on a beach as a marker of the claim:
He also named the island of Chichijima "Peel" after then British Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel. Beechey was also surprised to find two men living on the islands. They remained on the islands after the William left the year before in 1826. The men were Wittrein and Petersen.
In 1830, with the help of the British Consul to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Richard Charlton, Richard Millichamp, and Matteo Mazzaro sailed to the islands. The first permanent colony was made up of Nathaniel Savory of Bradford, Massachusetts, America, Richard Millichamp of Devon, England; Matteo Mazzaro of Ragusa/Dubrovnik, Austrian Empire (now in Croatia); Alden B. Chapin and Nathaniel Savory of Boston; Carl Johnsen of Copenhagen; as well as seven unnamed men and 13 women from the Kingdom of Hawaii.Notes on the Bonin Islands, Michael Quin, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 26, (1856), pp. 232–235, Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) They found the climate suitable for farming and the raising of livestock. Rum was made from cane sugar, and bordellos were opened, sometimes staffed by women kidnapped from other island chains. Whalers and other ships that could not find another friendly port in Japan often visited the Bonins for provision and recreation.Coppock, p. 61
Two years later, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland published a posthumous, abridged publication of Titsingh's French translation of .
Further settlers arrived in 1846 aboard the whaling ship Howard. They established themselves initially in South Island. One of them, a woman from the Caroline Islands named Hypa, died in 1897 at the age of about 112, after being baptized on her deathbed.
Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the United States Navy visited the islands in 1853 and bought a property at Port Lloyd from Savory for $50. The US "Colony of Peel Island" (Chichijima) was created, and Savory was appointed governor.
In 1853 there were Peel Island 31 inhabitants, made up as follows; four English, four American, one Portuguese, the rest being natives from either the Sandwich, the Ladrones, the Caroline or Kingsmill islands, together with children born on the Bonins.The Bonin Islands
In January 1862 (Bunkyū 1), the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan claimed the islands in a short-lived colonial enterprise. The shogunal steamboat Kanrin Maru was dispatched to the islands with a crew of cartographers, physicians, and prominent bureaucrats. The islands were officially renamed Ogasawara, referring to the legendary Japanese discoverer from the late 16th century. This tentative colonization, however, did not last for long. In the summer of 1863, under foreign pressure, the shogunate ordered the evacuation of the islands.
In 1875, the Japanese Meiji government reclaimed the islands.Language and Citizenship in Japan, edited by Nanette Gottlieb, Chapter 10, p. 176. The Japanese names of each island were resolved, and 38 settlers from Hachijojima were sent the following year. In 1876, the islands were put under the direct control of the Home Ministry. Further foreign settlements were banned, and the government assisted settlers who wished to relocate from mainland Japan. The islands' forests were also reduced to use the land for sugar cane production. Colonists largely segregated themselves in two different villages, one for the Bonin Islanders and the other for the Japanese. Bonin Islanders were eventually granted Japanese nationality in 1882. Jack London visited the islands in 1893 and published an account of his sojourn.
20th century Lionel Cholmondeley compiled a history of the islands over several years, publishing it in 1915.
In 1917, 60–70 Bonin islanders claimed ancestry among the 19th-century English-speaking settlers; however, in 1941, no Bonin people would acknowledge descent from these early colonists.National Geographic, October 1944, pp. 387–388, 404. The current residents include some who claim to be related to Nathaniel Savory. In the winter of 1920–1921, Russian Futurist painter David Burliuk lived in the Bonin Islands and painted several landscapes of the islands.