Bonin Islands

The Bonin Islands, known in Japan as the Ogasawara Group (小笠原群島, Ogasawara Guntō?) are an archipelago of over 30 subtropical and tropical islands, some 1,000 kilometres (540 nmi; 620 mi) directly south of Tokyo, Japan. "Bonin Islands" is the common name in English for Ogasawara Guntō, from the Japanese word bunin (an archaic reading of 無人 mujin), meaning "no people" or "uninhabited." The only inhabited islands of the group are Chichi-jima (父島), the seat of the municipal government, and Haha-jima (母島) which includes Ogasawara Village.

Ogasawara Municipality (mura) and Ogasawara Subprefecture (Tokyo Prefecture) take their names from the Ogasawara Group. However, Ogasawara Archipelago (小笠原諸島, Ogasawara shotō?), may also be a wider collective term that includes other islands in Ogasawara Municipality, such as the Volcano Islands, along with other small, uninhabited and isolated islands.

A total population of 2,440 comprising 2,000 on Chichi-jima, and 440 on Haha-jima lives in the Ogasawara Group, which have a total area of 73 square kilometres (28 sq mi).

Because the Ogasawara Islands have never been connected to a continent, many of their animals and plants have undergone unique evolutionary processes. This has led to the islands' nickname of the "The Galapagos of the Orient", and their nomination as a natural World Heritage Site on June 24, 2011. The giant squid (genus Architeuthis) was filmed off the Ogasawara Islands for the first time in the wild on September 27, 2005, and was captured in December 2006.

A 25m-diameter radio telescope is located in Chichijima, which is one of the stations of the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA) project, and is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.