Anijima Coast

Anijima lies immediately north of Chichijima in the Bonin Islands, separated from the larger island by the narrow Anijima Strait. The 7.87-square-kilometre island is rugged, rising to Mount Mikaeri at 254 metres, and its dry shrubland covers an old oceanic landscape never joined to a continent. Warm currents and a tropical climate shape the vegetation, while the volcanic coast descends steeply into deep water. Unlike Chichijima and Hahajima, this small island along the coast has no permanent settlement.

Spanish, Japanese and Dutch navigators entered the surrounding waters between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Bonins were uninhabited when the first recorded navigators reached them, though later research has found traces of prehistoric Micronesian visits. During the Tokugawa period, exploratory expeditions surveyed the islands but the shogunate left them undeveloped. From 1824, American and British whalers began calling at the archipelago for water and turtles; a permanent mixed settlement followed on Chichijima in 1830.

Anijima's difficult terrain and scarce fresh water kept its coast peripheral to that settlement. The newcomers based themselves on Chichijima, while the rugged neighbor served mainly as shoreline and strait passage. Provisioning traffic passed close to its coast, yet the absence of a secure camp kept Anijima without a lasting population. The surrounding sea's importance came from provisioning and navigation rather than a harbour economy of its own. For this location, Anijima is the rocky, waterless approach to Chichijima, where whalers and colonists made their base.