TANEGASHIMA, Kagoshima Pref. -- Tanegashima may be the most ballistic place in Japan.

Despite its diminutive dimensions, this oblong-shaped island just a hop away from Kagoshima belies its explosive role in Japan's development.

The island's most historic bang came in 1543, when the sand on this unlikely isle became the first in Japan to crunch under Western feet. Crippled by a typhoon, a Portuguese ship landed at the island's most southern point, Cape Kadokuramisaki, and those who came ashore ushered in the nation's first known encounter with the West.

This first contact brought with it a tool that was to greatly shape the nation's future: the gun -- or matchlock musket, to be exact. The castaway sailors demonstrated the weapon, greatly impressing the local daimyo, who soon set blacksmiths to work to try to reproduce it. Though work ostensibly went well at first, ultimately they lacked the technology to make one crucial component: the screw.

Legend has it that in order to learn the method, the head blacksmith traded his 16-year-old daughter to the sailors, who traveled to a nearby colony and brought a gunsmith to train the islanders. To this day, the arrival of the gun in Tanegashima is a much ballyhooed event on this sparsely populated island.

A cursory glance around Nishinoomote, home to nearly three-quarters of the island's 40,000 people, reveals the pervasive influence of the chance appearance of the Portuguese. The city is replete with gun souvenirs and a gun museum -- where one of the two matchlocks acquired from the Portuguese is on display. There is even an annual celebration, the Tanegashima Gun Festival, held the last weekend of each July

On the southeastern corner of the island is a parking lot for the country's biggest and most expensive toys. Here lies the nation's largest launchpad: the Tanegashima Space Center. This sprawling base, reaching from the turquoise coastline to the surrounding verdant hills, contains launch and monitoring facilities as well as a space museum, visited by 120,000 people annually. For most natives, the space center has become a distant, hackneyed feature of the local landscape.

But for Hironobu Hamazoi's family and around 50 others, the end of March offered a unique opportunity to tour the facilities. In an outreach program to heighten local understanding and familiarize islanders with the space development program and the center's facilities, the Tanegashima Space Center held a parent-child space study day. The visit to the base was Hamazoi's first in 20 years. "I hadn't been here since I skipped class to come take a picture of the N-1 rocket launch," Hamazoi said, video camera clasped tightly in hand.

At that time, the site, established in 1968, was still something of a novelty. When Hamazoi, now a postal employee temporarily assigned to Tanegashima, heard that the Space Center was offering a day study course and tour of the facilities, he immediately fired off an application, he said.

At first glance, Tanegashima may seem an unlikely place for a cutting-edge rocket facility. But, while less than ideal, it was deemed the most suitable site in 1966, said Mitsunori Miyasato of the National Space Development Agency.

When the government started shopping for a plot of land to build their space starter kit, Tanegashima was the best deal in town. Certain conditions are necessary for a launchpad, and though areas of Okinawa may have been more appropriate, it was still under U.S. control. "In case anything were to go wrong, it is important to have it in an isolated, lightly populated area."

In addition, because the rockets are launched to the east, the ocean provides a safety net of sorts. There are also local traffic, safety and budget considerations, Miyasato said. In choosing a site, one of the most important factors is getting as close to the equator as possible. "An island surrounded by water and right on the equator would be ideal," Miyasato said.