Everyone in the crowd by Shinobazu Pond on 9 December 1909 had come to watch Japan's first official flight. Lt. Aihara Shiro of the Imperial Navy had helped build the machine, and he wanted a turn in it.
The glider was a 7.4-metre biplane of bamboo and cloth. A Frenchman, Yves Le Prieur, a naval officer serving as military attache at the French embassy in Tokyo, had designed it. Aihara, who lived near him in Aoyama, brought in Professor Tanakadate Aikitsu of Tokyo Imperial University, who corrected the design in a wind tunnel. Four days earlier, at a school ground, the glider had refused to lift any of the three men. It rose only when a boy from the crowd climbed aboard, after his father said yes.
At the pond a car towed the glider along the bank. Le Prieur's first try failed. His second covered about 100 metres. Then Aihara climbed in.
The rope
The glider rose about 20 metres. Then one of the tow ropes snapped. The machine fell, the onlookers panicked, and Aihara landed in the pond, unhurt.
Le Prieur flew again on 26 December and made it. The Japanese and French sources call Le Prieur's flight the official first. Aihara's is the one that ended in the water.
What happened next
The Navy sent Aihara to Germany in March 1910 to study flying. On 4 January 1911 the airship he was riding in crashed. He died of acute peritonitis on 8 January, aged 31.
Japan's aviation histories do not count him as the country's first aviation casualty. He received no posthumous promotion. Japanese Wikipedia reports a view that the Navy hid the cause of death, fearing the effect on those who would follow him. Not every source goes that far: a Kodansha science column says only that some people think the Navy played it down, and asks what really happened. Kaneko Yozo, the officer later sent to France to learn flying, called him "a pioneer of our country's aviation."
See it yourself
- The pond. Your guide sets the scene at Shinobazu Pond, where the glider was towed along the bank. Bentendo temple sits on its island.
- The crowd's view. The 1909 photograph above shows the glider, its tow line and the onlookers on the pond's edge.
Hear it on the tour
Photo credits
- Shinobazu Pond and Bentendo temple in autumn: Nesnad / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, resized
