Chapter 1 - Humanising Science in Modern Japan

Summary

As the Watarase and Tone rivers once again burst their banks in the summer of 1910, violent floods submerged part of the Kantō plain, spreading disaster almost as far as the inner suburbs of Tokyo. By then, former Diet member Tanaka Shōzō (1841-1913) was 69 years old. He had spent most of the last two decades of his life fighting for the rights of rural communities affected by floodwater contaminated by the acidic run-off of copper mining in the area. Together with Ishikawa Sanshirō amongst others, he had campaigned against the forced relocation of the village of Yanaka in Tochigi Prefecture, which the government had designated as the site of a drainage basin for polluted waters.

After the 1910 floods, however, despite age and frailty, the indefatigable campaigner set off on foot on repeated journeys of two to four weeks in order meticulously to observe and record water levels along both rivers and their tributaries. It is estimated that during this period he travelled between 1,800 and 2,000 kilometres. He consigned the drawings and notes on what he saw and heard from local farmers to his Kasen junshi nikki (River pilgrimage diary), which he scribbled in the margins of his regular diary.

It was not the first time that Tanaka had braved muddy banks and inclement weather to investigate riparian conditions, as attested to by his voluminous writings. But if anything, the travels on which he embarked at the end of that year were perhaps more systematic and thorough than before in methods and purpose. Tanaka was keen to assess the effects of human action on river flows and so also collected extensive data on logging practices in the region. He was adamant that stripping trees off mountain sides for use in the country's copper mines disturbed the balance of the natural environment with disastrous consequences for the people. As he wrote then:

The Nikko Mountains have been cultivated for three hundred years. Now this landscape is gradually dying. One shouldn't see water only at the site of a water source. Water comes from the mountain. The mountain is for plants, birds and animals.