Aogashima: The Tokyo Village Inside an Active Volcano

Aogashima is a village of about 166 people, 358 kilometres south of central Tokyo, and almost everything built on it sits inside the caldera of an active volcano. 12

The crater is a caldera, and a second volcano, Maruyama, has grown up inside it. In 1783 an eruption inside the crater burned 61 houses and killed seven people. In 1785, of the island's 327 residents at the time, an estimated 130 to 140 died. 3 The Geological Survey of Japan records that the 1785 eruption lasted more than a month and that new lava flowed out across the crater floor. 4 The survivors were evacuated to Hachijojima, and the Cabinet Office records that the island then stayed uninhabited for about fifty years. 3

The village office's own address is "Aogashima Village, no lot number, Tokyo": the island has no street numbering at all, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government describes it as an addressless island and the smallest village in Japan. 25

There is no direct service from the mainland; everything goes through Hachijojima. The village office lists a helicopter that flies all year, carries nine passengers and takes about twenty minutes, and a ferry whose service rate it puts at 50 to 60 percent, with the day's sailing decided at seven in the morning. 5

Geothermal steam, known on the island as hingya, still rises between the caldera's inner and outer rings. Villagers use the heat to cook, to run a sauna, and to make salt, and the Japan Meteorological Agency ranks the volcano C for activity, the lowest of its three classes. 13