Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/57227
Title: Okinawa, Japan and our world of islands
Authors: Baldacchino, Godfrey
Keywords: Okinawa Island (Japan) -- History -- 20th century
Okinawa Island (Japan) -- Politics and government
Okinawa Island (Japan) -- Social life and customs
Okinawa Island (Japan) -- Social conditions
Okinawa Island (Japan) -- Administrative and political divisions
Issue Date: 2020-03
Publisher: Research Institute for Islands and Sustainability
Citation: Baldacchino, G. (2020). Okinawa, Japan and our world of islands. Okinawan Journal of Island Studies, 1, 1-9.
Abstract: As any Japanese would know, Japan is exclusively archipelagic: it consists only of islands, thousands of them. It shares, with Indonesia and the Philippines, the privilege of being one of just three large and heavily populated island countries in the world, with each having over 100 million residents. Of these three countries, all in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan has the unique combination of a sprawling length (over 3,000 km) aligned in an arc that sweeps from north to south. The N-S alignment (unlike the W-E alignment of Indonesia or the more compact alignment of the Philippines) means that the country enjoys multiple climate zones and conditions simultaneously. One could, if the logistics permitted, ski on the snowy slopes of Sapporo, in Hokkaido, in the morning and then dive into the tropical and warm waters among the manta rays of Iriomote that same afternoon. There are sacred islands, artifi cial islands, uninhabited islands, industrial islands, resort islands, militarised islands, and islands that are nature reserves in Japan. Since the sprawling Japanese archipelago is strato-volcanic, there are regular volcanic eruptions on land and in the surrounding sea. Various cities and towns lie close to an active volcano that sometimes rains soot and ash on its surroundings: Mount Tarumae, not far from Tomakomai and Chitose, did so most recently in 1978. Moreover, lava transforms islands into sections of adjoining mainlands, as with Kagoshima’s Sakurajima, a former island that has been joined to the Osumi peninsula on the Kyushu ‘mainland’ since 1914 because of lava fl ows. Other islands, such as Esanbe Hanakita Kojima, erode or collapse back into the very ocean that had spawned them (McCurry, 2018). Meanwhile, yet another group of islands are born ex novo, rise, and take shape above the waves, as recently occurred with Nishinoshima (Mortillaro, 2016). Watching serenely over all this lies Mount Fuji, which last erupted in 1707 (Singh, 2018). The Japanese think of their country as offi cially comprising four ‘mainlands’: these are the large islands of (from north to south) Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. With its 100 million inhabitants, Honshu (where Tokyo is located) shares the privilege of being the world’s second most heavily populated island after Java, where Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is located. Additionally, Japan has a huge exclusive economic zone, the eighth largest in the world, thanks to its sprawling island components.
URI: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/57227
Appears in Collections:Scholarly Works - FacArtSoc

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
Baldacchino.Okinawa_Japan_and_Our_World_of_Islands.pdf149.32 kBAdobe PDFView/Open


Items in OAR@UM are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.