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Ogasawara NP, Tokyo
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A 10m sperm whale stranded on nearby Anijima in May 2025. For a 2026 Visitor Center exhibit, the Ogasawara Whale-Watching Association recovered its bones, buried them, then dug them up for display.
A 2026 sperm-whale exhibit paired a giant-squid arm—thought to be a whale’s leftovers—with a 9m life-size whale drawing marked by round sucker scars from squid struggles.
Sperm whales can be identified by nicks and scars on their tail flukes. The Center’s 2026 exhibit reported 95 individuals identified in Ogasawara between 2020 and 2024, including whales known there for more than 10 years.
A 2024–25 Center exhibit revealed a caddisfly mystery: researchers tracking a little-known species found 5 new species, inferred to have diversified from a single ancestor after reaching Ogasawara.
The Center has displayed some of Ogasawara’s earliest photographs, taken in 1875 by Shinji Matsuzaki aboard the survey ship Meiji Maru. The National Archives holds 25 images, including island views, residents and homes.
A John Manjiro exhibit at the Center put his 4 months stranded on Torishima in perspective: 3 earlier castaways survived on that seabird-filled island for 19 years, until another shipwreck brought them into contact with a new crew.
A Center photo exhibition traced the postwar divide: 129 islanders of European ancestry returned to Chichijima in 1946 under U.S. rule; residents evacuated during the war did not return until Japan regained the islands in 1968.
The Center’s 2019 ship show featured a completed “phantom” ferry: Super Liner Ogasawara was planned to cut the Tokyo–Chichijima trip to 17 hours, but expected annual losses of ¥2 billion stopped the service before launch.
The Center’s 2026 calendar included a takonoha craft session. Island weavers adapted Hawaiian techniques to leaves of Ogasawara’s endemic screw pine, making hats, baskets and sandals; wartime evacuation caused many techniques to be lost.
