Fantastic plastic creations attract curious tourists

AMAKUSA, Kumamoto Prefecture--The first thing that jumps into view when tourists step off a boat at Goshourajima island here is the head of a giant Tyrannosaurus rex on a pedestal.

A three-horned Triceratops, looking as if it is ready to charge, stands on the roof of a building that showcases local products.

Over at the fishing village center is a long-necked Elasmosaurus plesiosaur.

Made of fiber-reinforced plastic, these eye-catching designs were created by Hidenari Matsunaga, 34, who works at Aqua Marine Matsunaga, a shipbuilder in Amakusa's Goshoura district. It has just three employees.

Light, strong and durable, fiber-reinforced plastic is widely used to make boats, car components and other products. Matsunaga used to work for a design company. He crafted the dinosaurs to publicize the island.

Goshourajima, with a population of 2,300, is famous for its rich veins of dinosaur fossils from the Cretaceous period, which ranged from 140 million to 65 million years ago.

To get ideas for his creatures, Matsunaga traveled to dinosaur exhibitions across Japan. In March 2000, he completed his first: a 2.5-meter-long statue of a carnivorous Deinonychus that took him two months to build. He presented it to the town of Goshoura, which is now integrated into Amakusa city.

Town officials were so impressed with his work that they paid him hundreds of thousands of yen for his next statue: a Triceratops.

After that, Aqua Marine Matsunaga, which his father runs, set up a studio in which he now manufactures a variety of creations for a growing raft of customers.

Dinosaurs are not the only creations that Matsunaga produces. He has made huge replicas of citrus fruits and marine life. In fact, he will try his hand at just about anything a customer requests.

In 2005, he created a 4.5-meter long octopus statue that now sits in a square near the beach in Amakusa's Ariake district. Tourists like to pose in its tentacles.

This past March, he made two 2-meter-diameter dekopon--both peeled and unpeeled. The thick-skinned citrus fruit is a local specialty. They sit on the roof of an agricultural cooperative market in the city's Seto district.

In April, nine more Matsunaga creations--among them a prawn, a sea bream, a free-range chicken and a pig raised on extract of Japanese apricot--went up on display along a national road in neighboring Kami-Amakusa city.

Aqua Marine Matsunaga has been inundated with inquiries and orders from around the country.

One client wanted a giant dinosaur. Another asked for 30 life-size tunas to display at its company outlets.

The company founded by Matsunaga's grandfather today earns more from fanciful replicas than it does from its core business of building fishing boats and water tanks.

Matsunaga enjoys his newfound vocation. "I want to keep making things that stun spectators and are the talk of the town," he says.(IHT/Asahi: November 3,2009)