100 Years Of Aviation In Japan: The Pioneers

No aviation without brave pilots: There were people fascinated with flight even in the Edo period, such as Ukita Kokichi from Okayama, who made attempts at calculating what wingspan would be needed to let man soar like a bird, something he seems to have achieved in 1785:

Ukita studied how birds fly. He finally concluded, "Compute the ratio of the wing's area to the body's weight and use that ratio to create an artificial wing. Humans may use them to fly like a bird."

His skill of paperhanging was very useful for making wings. He made the wings' ribs of bamboo, covered them with paper and fabric and varnished the surface with lacquer from Japanese persimmons.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Fast forward to the late 19th century, and we have Chuhachi (Tyuuhaci) Ninomiya, who made paper planes that may have been able to carry a man. The first airplane flight in Japan was likely on 29 April 1891, when a propeller-driven unmanned plane took off and flew about 10 meters at a height of one meter and 36 meters at a height of six meters the following day. He even tried to interest the military, who thought he was crazy!

(Source: Russel Naughton website, quoting Japanese websites that unfortunately do not work, except the one that goes to the Hiko Shinto shrine that Ninomiya founded near Kyoto, to "pray for the repose of victims of airplane accidents around the world").

Around this time, in April, 1911, Yoshitoshi Tokugawa made the first flights at Yoyogi, Tokyo and Tokorozawa, Saitama, 100 years ago.

Top image by painter Shigeo Koike shows the then state-of-the-art French biplane designed by Henri Farman, used by Tokugawa in his pioneering flights.

There were several female aviators too that deserve to be remembered. Ninamiji Yone from Wakayama prefecture was the first Japanese female pilot, getting her licence at the Schiller Airplane School in the U.S. in 1912. I'm not sure about the name, could that be near the O'Hare Airport in Chicago?



Hyodo Tadashi from Ehime prefecture is more famous, having gotten her licence in Japan, the first woman to do so.

This book, Hyodo Tadashi: Sora wo Tobimasu! has all the details about her and her young collegues.

She was the inspiration for a NHK drama in 1976, called Kumo no Juutan, which made lead actress Asaji Yoko famous.

In the drama, a 1936 Boeing A75 was used, with the registration number J-3641. A fast biplane that was sturdy and still used in the 1940s for what the agricultural chemical industries call "crop dusting" i e spraying dangerous pesticides on huge farm fields...

Apparently, the real airplane is exhibited in a Nasu, Tochigi prefecture museum dedicated to Japan's WW1 veterans. Looks like a rather unusual place, could be worth a visit, except here at Kurashi, we are very sensitive, or should I say strongly adverse, to war.

The airplane Ms. Tadashi used in 1922 (when she was in her early 20s) was a slender Curtiss JN-4 Jenny, according to the book.

I haven't found any images from that 1976 NHK drama series, but the OTS song is nice!

雲のじゅうたん


I think it is only fair to include two Korean female pilots from the pioneering era. There has been some controversy over a 2005 film called Blue Swallow, that dramatizes and romanticizes the (short) life of Park Kwang-yong:

24 July 1901 - 7 August 1933. Birth place: Taegu City Kyongsang-Do in Korea.
She was 168cm, which was very tall for women at that time. On 1 February 1926, she entered Tokyo Nippon Airplane school in Tokyo. In 1927, she got a third-class pilot license. When a reporter asked her about boyfriends, she answered "My boyfriend is my airplane." In 1928, she got a second-class pilot license. In 1933, she tried to fly over the Korean Strait, but she crashed into Gengadake Mountain in Atami city and died.

(Source: Paperback Centrism blog)

Why controversial? Because it turns out that Ms. Park was (probably) not first at all. That honour goes to Pyongyang-born Kwon Ki-ok, who instead of going to Japan decided to study aviation in China, graduating from the Yunnan Airforce School, affiliated with Chang Kai-chek, in 1925. She became a captain of Central Airforce of the Kuomintang in China, and survived WW2. The Blue Swallow film had to change some of its descriptions about Ms. Park, as the Korean public are very sensitive about any claims involving Imperial Japan...

Anyway, if you enjoy early era aviation as much as I do, here is the Blue Swallow trailer, with a lot of computer graphics to brighten your weekend!

青ツバメ



More aviation history on Kurashi:
100 Years Of Aviation In Japan: Part 1
100 Years Of Aviation In Japan: The Music (updated)
100 Years Of Aviation In Japan: Leaving on a Jetplane

Eco News from Japan and Asia!

100 Years Of Aviation In Japan: Leaving On A Jet Plane

I feel strongly for everyone who left Japan in a hurry in March. It is a remarkable, extraordinary time. I chose to stay, others left. Hope to see you all back here soon again. Meanwhile, here is John Denver, Leaving on a jetplane:



I'm also reminded of a commercial that was popular when JAL was in better financial shape. With fuel costs going through the roof, commercial airlines are facing impossible odds.

JAL, established in 1951, has seen a lot of such odds over the years. 100 years of aviation, but flying was never meant to be this cheap.

浪漫飛行　Roman Hikou is possibly one of Japan's most expensive TV commercials back then in the bubble era. Here is Kome Kome Club, a CM for leasure trips back in April 1990 to Okinawa:



Long before there were jets in the sky, the airplanes where smaller, and more simple, but still got you from A to B. In the 1930s, you could buy a ticket and fly from Tokyo all over with commerical services, using Lockheed P-38 and other modern aircrafts. (Much later, the company became more known here for its bribery scandal involving the Prime Minister Tanaka, after the U.S. government had bailed out the company in 1971).

The Japanese government was a strong backer of commercial aviation, though the early companies struggled to maintain their operations through the 1920s. To promote civil aviation in the country, on October 30, 1928, the Japanese government helped set up a national flag carrier known as Japan Air Transport Corporation (JAT).

From 1931, for example, the government freely used JAT's civilian aircraft, mostly the Dutch Fokker Super Universal. The Greater Japan Airways also used domestically built versions of the Douglas DC-3.

In 1938, JAT carried nearly 70,000 passengers, representing 2.6 percent of the world's passenger traffic.

Source: The Origins of Commercial Aviation in Japan

Some of the passanger planes made in Japan in the 1930s were built by Nakajima in Gunma prefecture and Mitsubishi in Aichi prefecture.





Paintings by Shigeo Koike, an amazing artist, famous among airplane model builders around the world for his package art work for the Hasegawa company!

The Nakajima plane (bottom image) is a Japan-built DC-2. Nakajima had huge factories in western Tokyo, including Ogikubo, Musashino and Tama, as well as in Ota in Gunma. They built the best engines in Japan around this time, some 7,000 for civilian aircrafts.


The engines, based on the Bristol Jupiter, were called Kotobuki, and there were several later models with many improvements. Actually, workers at Nakajima had it rather good, with "a welfare program" that was admired by others, according to the un-official history, found here.

At least as long as it lasted. Anyway, to tie in with the music theme, and the title of this post, did you know that Imperial Japan actually attempted to build jet planes? Neither did I. Read more about the small Kyushu Shinden jet here and more technical details about the Nakajima Kikka here.

Eco News from Japan and Asia!

100 Years Of Aviation In Japan: The Music

Aviation has touched a nerve here in Japan for a long time. Here is an early tune celebrating the amazing Tachikawa-to-Paris-And-London flight of the Ki-15 Kamikaze in April 1937. How about it?

Kamikaze Dakara (Because there is the Divine Wind)



No, this is not a tune for the suicide pilots who had no other means but to attack, later on.

This is a song from before the war. Departing from Tachikawa April 6, 1937, they went to Taipei, Hanoi, and over the next four days reaching Athens, Rome, Paris, and finally Croydon Aerodrome, London, UK. I just love the samples of aircraft engine noise. Lyrics? All about going from the east to the weat, and what a dazzling hero the 26 year old pilot is. You'll hear the singers mention Paris and London.

The pilot was Iinuma Masaaki from Nagano, and his navigator was Tsukagoshi Kenji, from Gunma (his father was a Japanese lawyer and his mother was British). The aircraft was a Mitsubishi plane, registered as J-BAAI. They broke the world record, peacefully, and were able to attend events related to the coronation of King George (of the Oscar-winning King's Speach fame).

I'll be blogging more about their trip at another date.

Back to aviation-related hits: In 1973, Yuming had her first huge hit with a song called Hikouki Gumi.

The white sloping road
continued into the sky
flickering heat haze
envelopes the child

Nobody noticing, all alone.
that child keeps ascending
she fears nothing
and then she soars

Longing for the sky
she soars across the sky
that child's life is a contrail



Earlier this year in 2011, AKB48 has made a hit with the same name (which means "airplane cloud" or contrail):



A very popular NHK drama, Saka no Ue no Kumo, about the winds of change in early modern Japan, had a hit song called Stand Alone in 2009, written by Joe Hisaishi, sung in Japanese by Sarah Brightman, the UK star. Historical dramas like this one are very popular here.

Here is a nice version with English subtitles:

坂の上の雲 (Stand Alone)


What I would like to end this post with is the Google Earth6 Flight simulation, soaring slowly over the mountains in Hokkaido in northern Japan:

Eco News from Japan and Asia!

100 Years Of Aviation In Japan: Part 1

The first flights in an aircraft in Japan were made in Yoyogi, Tokyo and Tokorozawa, Saitama. Lieutenant General Baron Yoshitoshi Tokugawa studied aeronautical engineering in France, and showed what could be done with state-of-the-art aircrafts of the day in Tokorozawa, April 1911. In Tokorozawa, they are very proud of their history, as you will notice at the Koukuu Kouen Station on the Seibu line: they even have a cafe noting the 1911 event.

Do visit Tokorozawa, there is a lovely park with a museum that has some details of this amazing feat. The Aviation Museum is rather new, but in fact, this is the location of the Imperial Army Flight School that helped shape history in the 20th century. If you are looking for a day trip from Tokyo, the park in itself is worth a visit, and there are restaurants too. Easy access from Shinjuku or Ikebukuro, using the Seibu line.

On display both outdoors and inside the Tokorozawa Aviation Museum are a wide range of aircrafts, from every stage of development, up till recent jets. Do try the flight simulators! But what really fascinates me are the older flying machines. I had no idea that Japan had so many airplane manufacturers, and such a wide range of engines and types.

Tokorozawa Koukou Kouen (Japanese website)
Tokorozawa Aviation Museum (Wikipedia)

If you just want to go and watch modern commercial airplanes take off and land, then do take the brief Monorail trip to Haneda Airport. Before Narita, this was Japan's main gateway to the skies. Since 1931, it has carried all kinds of dignitaries to the city, like The Beatles in 1966, and the BOAC, SAS and Airoflot planes of that era.


For Tokyo, the real deal used to be Tachikawa Airfield. Before Haneda, this was Tokyo's and Japan's early international aerodrome, as they were sometimes called back in the 1920s and 1930s. It played an immense role during WW2. But, as with other Tokyo airfields, it failed to protect the capital and the country from the WW2 air raids.

This is also the huge airfield that the Americans used for both the Korean and the Vietnam War. It was returned to Japan in the 1970s, and when I went there, I could hear helicopters, possibly on missions to aid earthquake survivors in Tohoku. There is a large Disaster Hospital, and still along the train tracks, you can spot many factories related to the old aircraft companies, like Showa, IHI and Tachikawa. The largest company here used to be Nakajima, but they were broken up after WW2 (into Fuji and Subaru). They still have warehouses and I was told there are a large number of vintage airplanes here, but not on public display.

In fact, there is very little in Tachikawa for the airplane aficionado. A large part of the old Tachikawa Airfield is now the huge park called Showa Memorial Park, from 1983. Its focus is - flowers. It has got to be the biggest park in Tokyo! It has dog runs, bicycle rentals, orienteering set-ups, ponds, and bird sanctuaries. You could easily spend an entire day there, forgetting you are still technically in Tokyo.

Showa Memorial Park (Tachikawa)

With the cherry trees in bloom, I'm glad I went, but I was also surprised how little remains of its aviation legacy. For that, the trip to Tokorozawa is much more rewarding.

Eco News from Japan and Asia!