Syowa Station, the largest of the Antarctic Research facilities maintained by NIPR, is located on East Ongul Island, almost diametrically across the Antarctic Continent from NSF's McMurdo Station. Syowa Station was established immediately following the 1956-57 International Geophysical Year (IGY). NIPR also maintains three smaller, specialized Antarctic facilities: Mizuho Station, Asuka Station and Dome Fuji Station. Since 1990, it has maintained a small Arctic field laboratory in Ny-Alesun on Svalbard Island. NPIR's research ship Shirase provides a platform for oceanographic research, which is conducted primarily on the Indian Ocean side of Antarctica. The Institute's budget for Japanese Fiscal Year 1997 was \3.15 billion, or approximately $30 million.

Among the unique facilities at NIPR's Tokyo headquarters are its meteorite storage room and research laboratory, and its low temperature storage and analysis laboratories.

The meteorite storage room contains approximately 9,000 meteorites, probably the world's largest collection of Antarctic meteorites, including seven verified lunar meteorites and two Martian meteorites. These samples have been collected since 1969, mainly on the bare icefields around the Yamato and Belgica Mountains. Unlike the situation in other parts of the Antarctic, volcanic rocks are very rare in these icefields, so that meteorites are relatively easy to distinguish from terrestrial rocks. Meteorites are analyzed, catalogued and stored at NIPR headquarters in Tokyo, which makes samples available on loan to qualified scientists worldwide.

NIPR's low temperature storage room contains a large collection of ice cores obtained between 1995 and 1998 at the Dome Fuji Station, located approximately 1,000 kilometers south of Syowa Station on an ice dome whose summit is 3,800 meters above sea level. The ice cores were obtained by drilling into the dome to a depth of 2,500 meters, corresponding to a 350,000-year accumulation. Drilling could, in principle, be extended downward for an additional 500 meters before encountering the bedrock on which Dome Fuji rests. Analysis of the ice cores, including their chemical and particularly their gaseous composition and their volcanic ash content, is conducted at NIPR's Tokyo facilities.

International Cooperation

NIPR manages Japan's cooperation in the polar aspects of several multilateral programs in which US researchers also participate, including the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP). In the past, it also engaged in specific international cooperative programs with the United States, including a 1972-1975 McMurdo Dry Valley Drilling Program and the 1980-86 Mount Erbus Seismic Study, both of which also involved New Zealand. Cooperative research with China was initiated in 1988 and has intensified since 1994.

Since 1958, NIPR has dispatched one or two Japanese scientists each year to expeditions of other Antarctic Treaty Parties, and has also invited one to three foreign scientists to participate in its Antarctic expeditions. In 1993, the first foreign scientist-a Chinese physicist-spent the austral winter at Syowa Station.

NIPR cooperates with NASA's Johnson Space Center and the Smithsonian Institution in its meteorite search and analysis program, and loans meteorite samples to many US researchers. The Institute has hosted an occasional American researcher, and US researchers invariably participate in NIPR's annual Antarctic Meteorite Symposium.

Until approximately 15 years ago, there was considerable bilateral cooperation between NIPR and NSF's Office of Polar Programs (OPP), as suggested by trilateral programs involving Japan, New Zealand and the United States noted earlier. Currently, the only formal cooperative project between NIPR and NSF is the Auroral and Airglow Dynamics Research Project, based on a highly sensitive all-sky imager, designed at NIPR and installed at the South Pole Station, which continuously monitors the sky during the austral winter.

Dr. Takeo Hirasawa, the Director of NIPR, and his senior staff are eager to resume closer cooperation with OPP. Areas in which members of the senior research staff believe cooperation could be particularly beneficial to both the United States and Japan include marine biology and polar ecology; glaciology, including ice core drilling and analysis; and meteorite collection and analysis. One NIPR senior researcher noted that collection of upper atmosphere meteorological data above the Antarctic continent has actually decreased since the IGY so that active cooperation with the United States in establishing links between existing stations would be particularly beneficial.

Regarding Arctic Research, the responsible senior researcher emphasized that considerably more work needs to be done on the Pacific-side of the Arctic and noted that cooperation with the United States would greatly facilitate such activities.

NIPR Homepage