The sand on the roads is swept every morning. The settlement on Taketomi has white sand lanes, red-tiled roofs, coral stone walls and fukugi trees planted around the houses. The buildings are low and consistent in height because of the wind: typhoons decided the profile, and the walls and the tree lines were put there for the same reason, as successive layers of shelter rather than as landscaping.

Taketomi was designated an Important Preservation District in April 1987, and the island operates an agreement covering how buildings may be built and what colours may be used, in some detail. Ishigaki is about fifteen minutes away by boat, which is close enough that a good many visitors come and go inside a single afternoon. The population is in the three hundreds, and life here is not self-contained; a great deal comes across the water. Sand roads wash out when it rains, so sweeping them and repairing them is not housekeeping in addition to maintenance — it is the maintenance.

The rules are strict because what they protect is fragile. Coral walls, sand surfaces and tiled roofs all change shape within a few years if left alone, which means the scenery would be the first thing to go if the agreement were relaxed, well before anyone had time to reconsider. This is why an island of three hundred people can sustain regulations that a city of any size would find intolerable, and why the agreement is enforced by neighbours rather than by an office. Saying that the morning sweeping is how the landscape is preserved is not a figure of speech.