How popular is Ryoma?

Kochi Ryoma Airport

   What do John F. Kennedy, John Lennon and Leonardo da Vinci have in common?

   In fact, they are historical figures whose names have been used in airports. It is of no exaggeration to say that they are a few of the most representative historical characters of the USA, UK, and Italy.

   It is not unusual to use a personal name for the name of an airport in foreign countries but there were no precedents in Japan. Ryoma Sakamoto is the name of a person that was used for the name of an airport for the first time in Japan in 2003.

   So, how popular is Ryoma? It is difficult to represent popularity of an historical character by objective data, but as an example, let me show you the number of website returns when I searched on Google.

   The result of Ryoma Sakamoto was 1,190,000. Compared with the number of other people who were active at the end of the Edo period, such as Takamori Saigo (1828-1877): 555,000, Isami Kondo (1834-1868): 408,000, Soji Okita (1842-1868): 232,000 and Takayoshi Kido (1833-1877) 78,300, it is obvious that the number of Ryoma Samamoto is outstanding.

   The hero that Kochi is proud of will be loved all over Japan now and forever.

Taken from vol.33 PDF