The Plough Boy Journals

The Journals and Associated Documents

The Plough Boy Anthology

19th Century American Whaling

Bonin Islands

Pitcairn's Island

Dictionaries & Glossaries

Ashley's Glossary of
Whaling Terms

Dana's Dictionary of
Sea Terms

THE SCOTTISH

GEOGRAPHICAL

MAGAZINE

SOME NOTES ON THE BONIN ISLANDS.

By W. B. Mason, Corresponding Member for Japan.

      Steamers run monthly between Yokohama, Hachijo, and the two main islands of the Bonin Group. Once a year, in summer, the boat calls at various others of the long chain of green isles and barren rocks that stretch almost in a straight line from Vries to the Volcano Islands. Japan claims jurisdiction as far as Minami Torishima (Wake Island),¹ in Lat. 24' 15" N. and 154' E. Long., about 650 miles ESE. of Hahajima or the Coffin Group.

      The Bonin Islands consist of three distinct groups lying between the parallels of 26° 30' and 27° 45' N. Lat. They are of volcanic origin with a fringe of coral. The most northerly cluster was named Parry's Group by Captain Beechey, R.N., who visited the Bonins in 1827. The central and largest group includes Ototo-jima (Stapleton Island), Ani-jima (Buckland Island), and Chichi-jima (Peel Island), while the biggest member of the southernmost cluster (Coffin or Bailey Islands), is now known as Haha-jima. This last lies 580 miles due S. of Yokohama. The Japanese names are given on an original system. Chichi-jima, which means "Father Island," has near it the Islands of the Elder and the Younger Brothers (Ani and Ototo), while the islets round Haha-jima or "Mother Island" are termed Sister, Niece, etc., and the northernmost group includes the Bridegroom, the Bride, and even the Matchmaker.

      The Japanese claim to have discovered the Bonins in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and to have kept up fitful communication with them down to 1863, though formal possession was not taken until 1875. Their general name for the archipelago – Ogasawara-jima – is derived from that of the Daimyo, whose followers discovered it. Our word "Bonin" is a corruption of Jap. munin, which means uninhabited. Some maps give another name – Arzobispo – which is derived from old Spanish charts.

      From 1827 onwards the Bonins began to be inhabited by shipwrecked whalers and other waifs and strays from Hawaii and elsewhere,

who brought Kanaka wives with them. These and their descendants, to the number of about seventy, formed the sole population till the advent of the Japanese, who now number nearly 6000, and have founded a regular government, introducing schools, posts, roads, and other elements of a civilised community. The sugar industry has been largely developed, and sugar is now the chief article of export; some trade is also done in canning turtle and pine-apple for the Tokyo market.

      The half-caste settlers, who all speak English, remain on, as Japanese subjects, in their old holdings, and continue to live in cabins, thatched with the leaves of the cabbage palm. Many of these men spend the summer months sealing in the North Pacific. Most of the children now

Port Lloyd (Chichi-jima).

attend the Japanese Government Schools. These English-speaking settlers are Christians, and one of their number has been licensed by the Bishop of South Tokyo to act as their catechist and to carry on missionary work among the Japanese.¹

      The vegetation is tropical and luxuriant, including pine-apples, bananas, lemons, and oranges. No snakes or other venomous reptiles exist, and but few birds or butterflies;² but cockroaches and ants are everywhere a plague. A species of bat is found measuring some three

feet from wing to wing. The sea swarms with sharks, and the coast is visited by large turtles, which are caught by men from canoes.

      Passing Parry's Group – a number of fantastically jagged rocks – and leaving Ototo and Ani-jima on the left, the steamer enters the beautiful circular harbour of Chichi-jima, formerly known as Port Lloyd, apparently the crater of an ancient volcano. Of the numerous abrupt hills, all thickly wooded, that rise on every side, the highest is Asahi-yama (880 feet), at the east or upper end of the harbour. Behind a stretch of yellow sand on the NW. side stands the village of Omura, the seat of the local government. Most of the foreign settlers live at Okumura, a little to the NE. On the opposite or S. side is Ogi-ura, the only other fair-sized village.

      Haha-jima, which lies 35 miles to the south of Chichi-jima, is some 7 miles long by 1 1/2 miles broad. It has no harbours. The steamer anchors some two miles off the village of Okimura, which lies in a shallow bight with a picturesque approach. Though the island is hilly (highest point 1470 feet) and rockbound, its numerous valleys, well adapted for sugar cultivation, make it the most flourishing of the whole archipelago. A large breed of cattle find good grazing ground in the southern part. These animals furnish a rough amusement to the inhabitants by a peculiar kind of bull-fight in which men take no active part. The beasts are led into an arena. until their heads come close together, and the ensuing contest is one of brute strength. Victory is declared, as in ordinary Japanese wrestling, by the weaker being pushed outside the ring, or a throw may sometimes even occur by the two pairs of horns becoming interlocked. Little injury is allowed to be inflicted.

      The highest temperature during the three years (1897-1900) did not exceed 95° F., whilst the lowest registered was 48° F.

      The population of the twelve islands included under the denomination of the Ogasawara Islands is: Japanese, 5450, of whom 3086 are men and 2364 women; foreign settlers, 100, of whom 43 are men and 57 women.

      Professor Yoshiwara, with whom I made the tour, and who was specially sent by the Imperial University of Tokyo to investigate the geology of the islands, has kindly furnished me with the following interesting note. He says: "All the islets of the Ogasawara Group show the same geological formation. The chief rock in the Chichi-jima sub-group is agglomerate tuff alternating with andesite lava. . . . These two sub-groups (Chichi-jima and Haha-jima) are typical submarine volcanoes, sending out numerous streams of lava by subsequent eruptions after frequent periods of repose. Thus the submarine volcanic eruption of the Ogasawara Group began in the Eocene epoch, and had already ceased before the Miocene. This old volcanic chain must therefore be separated from the Fuji chain, which is younger Neogene, or partly even still more recent in origin. No indisputably Eocene volcanoes corresponding to the age of this chain have yet been found in Japan."

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