The Islands and the Stars: A History of Japan’s Space Programs

by Subodhana Wijeyeratne

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is among the six largest national space agencies in the world, along with China's CNSA, US's NASA, and Russia's Roscosmos. JAXA's budget is more than $1 billion USD—bigger than France or Germany individually, and more than that of Italy, India, Canada, and the UK combined. And yet, Japan's significant contributions have largely been absent in the history of space exploration, and space exploration largely absent in the history of technology in Japan. The Islands and the Stars corrects this conspicuous oversight. Through meticulous archival research in Japanese and anglophone archives, Subodhana Wijeyeratne examines the history of Japan's space exploration efforts over nearly a century.

  Wijeyeratne traces the evolution of Japan's space program from its early origins in the 1920s, through the postwar period of rapid technological innovation, to the consolidation of its various institutional elements into JAXA in 2003. He situates Japan's space programs within the broader history of the country's postwar recovery, economic growth, and cultural identity, while also considering their place within global trends in space exploration. Through this narrative, Wijeyeratne not only illuminates Japan's centrality to the global history of science and technology, but also offers insights into the future of global space exploration, emphasizing the importance of diverse voices and perspectives in the quest to understand our place in the cosmos.

352 pages, Paperback

Published January 27, 2026

Reviews

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Subodhana Wijeyeratne studied the history of Japanese space efforts as a Ph.D student at Harvard University, before joining the faculty of Purdue University and having his work published as a book. An author who studies the entirety of that effort, from the rockets developed in the early twentieth century through the present exploits of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in sending satellites to Earth orbit or exploratory spacecraft beyond low Earth orbit, has a choice on what topics he or she would like to emphasize. One could choose to emphasize the qualities of the rockets or spacecraft. But Wijeyeratne demonstrates here that he is more intrigued by the people. He advances the thesis that collaborations between numerous Japanese stakeholders have driven spaceflight in this nation forward, in ways that have sometimes differed from the United States or other nations. The Japanese initially succeeded in forming a space program because the aggressive policies of their government during the early twentieth century lent themselves to a strong military that included the use of rockets. Just nine years after the devastating bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a Japanese group had formed a space program thanks to the personnel and infrastructure from the military effort. By 1970, the Japanese had become just the fourth nation in the world to send a satellite into Earth orbit aboard a rocket of its own. Wijeyeratne not only explains these achievements, he explains that space achievements in Japan have come in a much more decentralized way than in the United States. Various stakeholders, from the people of private corporations who have advocated for the launches of their satellites, to the managers of various space agencies who have had different priorities (as opposed to the single space agency in the United States), to fishermen who have objected to launch sites in their vicinity, have made their voices heard. But the end result of these sometimes contentious collaborations has been an agency called JAXA which is one of the six largest space agencies in the world. Wijeyeratne explains these points well, although I do wish he had included some more details about Japanese space missions themselves: the technical details of the spacecraft, the scientific findings from the missions and how they have affected everyday life, etc. One other topic I am still curious about concerns the demographics of those involved in Japanese spaceflight. What opportunities have women had to contribute? There is room for further scholarship on Japanese space efforts, but Wijeyeratne had made a useful contribution for sure.

[Katie Putz · Rating 5 out of 5]

💫 The prettiest academic book I think I've ever seen.

"If there is one thing this book has sought to emphasize, it is that a space program is the sum total of the dreams of the people who form it. If engineers, bureaucrats, politicians, fishermen, technicians, journalists, explosives experts, and others had not dreamed of reaching for the stars, the institutions and funding for them to do so would never have come together. None of this motivation has gone away."

✏️ In the grand history of space exploration, Japan's position is rather underrecognized besides those of the U.S., Russia, Europe and China. This history serves to chronicle Japan's space programs from the 1920s to the founding of JAXA in 2003.

This focuses less on the technical developments (though it definitely covered those) and more on the people, policies and narratives that carried Japan's space dreams forward. 

Particularly interesting is the tension, unique in some ways in post-war Japan, between rocketry (a necessary aspect of any space program) as a military science and as one geared toward peaceful purposes. It was quite interesting to explore how that tension influenced the trajectory of Japan's space programs.

👥 This is not necessarily a general audience read. But it is certainly written in clear prose and not overly academic in tone, so if the subject interests you, you don't need to be an expert or a historian to grasp the material.

📍 Read on this sad little rock of ours.

❗Thanks to Standard University Press for the copy. My interview with the author will be up at The Diplomat soon