Forty years ago this spring, Kihachiro Aratake was diving in the warm seas off southwest Japan when he started trembling. He was a diving instructor looking for promising new sites to take tourists, and there in the waters off the southern coast of Yonaguni, a small and remote island close to Taiwan, he came upon something awe inspiring.
“Back in those days the sea was so very clear,” he says, “and looking down I felt I was looking down on Machu Picchu.” On the seabed he found a vast rock edifice of drastically straight lines and sharp angles, like the wall and terraces of the ancient Inca city. “I was so amazed — I had never seen anything like that before.”
