A colossal, dark-skinned man rides along the sidewalk on a motorbike: no helmet, two small children aboard — a vision of life in the laconic Tropics. There are times here too on Yonaguni, the westernmost land mass in Okinawa Prefecture, when you see a curvaceous island woman in a vivid, flower-patterned dress, and you think of Paul Gauguin and the Tahitian women he painted.

With good views on clear days of Taiwan 110 km away, most of the radio stations were in Chinese when I tried to tune in from my guesthouse in Sonai, the principal village on the tiny, 29-sq.-km island. Despite a smattering of older Okinawan houses, Sonai — with its unpainted houses and tumbledown walls — is not a place of immediate beauty. Most buildings are made of cement-faced cinder blocks which, after years of intense sunlight, heat and salt erosion, look baked and friable, like unglazed pottery.

Sonai's air of dereliction is clear to see from the summit of a steep cliff named Tindahanata. Its dilapidation, leached colors and torpor, however, belie the natural beauty of the island and the good cheer of its 1,700-odd inhabitants. Indeed, this visitor's impression was of the islanders making do, satisfied with their lot, and disinclined to advance.