Hello and welcome to the History of Japan Podcast, Episode 309, Flying High.

I've been on something of a kick looking at protest movements in Japan, perhaps you've noticed,

and it occurred to me as I was considering topics that there's really one very interesting one

I'd never talked about before at all on this show. It's time to redress

that fault. So this week we're going to cover the story of a government, an airport, and a group of

people desperately trying to keep that airport from being built. Let's talk a little bit first

about airports and aviation in Japan. Rather unsurprisingly, Japanese

people, like people everywhere, have a long history of thinking about how cool it would be to

fly through the sky. I actually came across the incredible story of Uikita Kokichi, sometimes

jokingly called Choljin Kokichi, Kokichi the Birdman, doing research for this very episode.

He was a papermaker in the mid-Eddo period who tried to build a pair of paper and

lacquer work wings, modeled on those of a bird. Upon using them to try and glide somewhere,

he either made it a few meters and crashed, or just crashed right away, was promptly

arrested by his domain officials, charged with disturbing the peace, and then kicked out of his

home domain. So, good idea, bad execution. During the Meiji period, the latest and greatest

innovations in aerospace technology began making their way to Japan. By the late

1870s, the Imperial military adopted technologies like observation balloons to help with reconnaissance,

once fixed wing aviation, airplanes in other words, became a thing, the Japanese military was quick to

jump on that as well.

On the civilian side of things, airplanes were quick to catch on too.

Japan's first civil flight organization was the Japan Air Transport Institute,

which started running flights between Osaka and Tokushima on the island of Shikoku in November 1922.

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