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Japan's Ogasawara (or Bonin) Islands are a site from which to observe the changing Japanese balance between bio-diversity and single-minded development, between the desire to save native species and the desire to satisfy human convenience, and between the modesty and creativity of local peoples and the arrogance and insensitivity bred of massive public works funding. This paper looks at the history of natural environment, the process of human settlement and depletion of bio-diversity, the present state of nature, the planned airport, local alternative proposals and recent shifts in bureaucratic thinking about it. The Ogasawara Islands are peripheral and economically 'backward', but they are now at the forefront of the struggle to re-negotiate the balance between humanity and nature in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore a little known aspect of British and Japanese history that began not long after Japan open its ports to the west in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is about negotiations between Japan and foreign powers over sovereign control of an island archipelago 1,000 kilometers southeast of Edo (Tokyo). The Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands were first visited by Japanese in the seventeenth century, declared British territory in 1827 and then reclaimed by Japan in 1876. The diplomatic discussions involved the British and US Consuls acting under instructions from their respective governments and negotiating with the highest levels of Japanese authority during both the Tokugawa and Meiji Periods. I argue that the islands were of little importance to either the governments of Britain or America and that the British authorities were more than willing to hand over sovereign control of the Bonin Islands to the Japanese as early as 1862. Indeed, by the mid-1870s, the British authorities in England were more concerned that the Japanese would not claim the islands and that Britain would be burdened with their responsibility. In arguing this, I provide a novel perspective of Japan's struggles with becoming a modern nation in an increasingly international setting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]