type:Article

The Ogasawara Islands, located on the Pacific Ocean about 1000 km from Tokyo, were discovered at the end of the 16th century and became a port of call for foreign ships at the end of the Edo period. After the Meiji Restoration, Japanese rule was granted and the islands became part of the administrative district of Tokyo, and during the war they became a fortress for the Japanese army. After the war, the island was occupied by the American forces, but was returned to Japan in 1968. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the national park administration, and nature conservation groups paid careful attention to the Ogasawara Islands, which had been spared from development and maintained islands’ unique natural environment peculiar to remote islands. They immediately set about surveying the natural environment of the Ogasawara Islands, designating as a national park, and had embarked on nature and environmental conservation. However, there was also a movement to turn the precious natural environment of the Ogasawara Islands into a tourist resource, and to develop tourism in the islands. The construction of an airport was planned as a means of developing tourism in the Ogasawara Islands. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Ogasawara airport project and the opposition movement. The construction of the first Ogasawara Airport was planned by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in 1969, but in the 1970s the plan had disappeared due to strong public opinion for nature conservation. However, the enactment of the Resort Law in 1987 triggered a boom in resort development, and various resort development plans were submitted in various parts of the country. Against this backdrop, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government again submitted a plan to build an airport in Ogasawara in 1989. Nature conservation groups immediately expressed their opposition, and this was followed by a number of academic and other groups campaigning against the construction of the airport on the grounds that it would destroy precious nature. Moreover, in 1990, the resort development boom, and the investment boom that had driven up the share prices to such a high level came to an end, plunging the country’s political economy into crisis. However, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the Ministry of Transport and some local people tried to promote the construction of Ogasawara Airport, but the nature conservation movement continued to oppose the construction and continued to investigate the impact of the construction of Ogasawara Airport on the natural environment. As a result, under the newly elected Governor Shintaro Ishihara in 1999, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government lost its enthusiasm for promoting the construction of airport, and finally withdrew the plan in 2001.