Tanegashima

Two things happened on this long flat island that changed Japan, and they are four hundred years apart.

In 1543 a Chinese junk carrying Portuguese passengers was driven ashore at the southern tip. The local lord, Tanegashima Tokitaka, bought two of their matchlock guns, had his swordsmiths take them apart, and within about ten years Japan was manufacturing firearms in quantity. Thirty years after that, massed gun volleys decided the battle of Nagashino. Japanese still call the matchlock a tanegashima. The Tanegashima Development Center Museum in Nishinoomote covers the story.

The second is the space centre. JAXA launches from the southeastern coast at Minamitane, and the pads sit on a headland with surf breaking below them, which is why it gets called the most beautiful launch site in the world. The Space Science and Technology Museum next to it is free and worth an hour. Free guided tours of the site run most days but must be booked ahead and are cancelled around launches. A launch draws visitors from across Japan, viewing points fill the night before, and dates move constantly, so treat a launch as a bonus rather than a plan.

Otherwise it is a quiet island: 57 kilometres long, low, subtropical and green, with good surf on the eastern beaches and sweet potatoes that turn up in shochu and in the very sweet anno-imo variety. Jetfoil from Kagoshima takes around ninety minutes, flights about forty.