by Gavan McCormack
In 1963, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries gave the go-ahead for a project for the re-development of Nakaumi Lake in western Japan.1 Nakaumi is Japan's fifth largest lake, and if the adjacent Lake Shinji is taken into consideration, the combined lake area ranks second in Japan, after Lake Biwa in Shiga (just east of Kyoto) and slightly above Kasumigaura in Ibaraki (just east of Tokyo).2 The combination in this lake system of the river-waters flowing into Lake Shinji and the sea-waters flowing into Nakaumi is responsible for a particularly fertile, brackish, lake environment, where river and sea fish and marine life converge, and human settlements grew around them because of their rich variety of food sources. However, the topography and dimensions of this area as settled by the ice age has been under pressure in the late 20th century. Once 97 square kilometres, the human interventions of recent decades have reduced Nakaumi to 88.5km2, and would reduce it much further, to just over 70km2 in the near future. Nor is it merely the dimensions that have to be revised in the geography texts; in future they may well have to revise even the category of lake to which it belongs, from brackish to fresh. The scale of change underway and being planned is momentous, and Lake Nakaumi and Lake Shinji have gradually emerged at the centre of debate about politics, ecology, direction, and value in late 20th century Japan.
This has long been a prosperous area. Here in ancient times the state of Izumo flourished, thanks to the combination of strategic location at the centre of the Japan Sea coast, safe harbour (even now the fishing port of Sakai Minato is regarded as one of the finest on the Japan Sea coast), rich fisheries and fertile farmlands. Izumo's wealth and resources were recorded meticulously in the year 733, when it was noted that the area was rich in agricultural, forestry and fishing products, and famed for its pottery, sake and iron-ware.3 Agricultural produce included rice, wheat, millet, soya beans, azuki beans, daikon, melon, sweet potato, mulberry and hemp, its rivers in spring were busy with the traffic of ships loaded with timber from the forests, and its lakes and rivers were teeming with marine life, including dolphin, shark, mullet, bass, herring, black bream, trepang, and whitebait in Lake Nakaumi, bass, gray mullet, shrimp, various shell-fish in Lake Shinji, and sweetfish (ayu), dace, roach, carp, salmon, trout, and eel in both.4 The fresh-water cockles (shijimi) of Lake Shinji were, and still are, renowned throughout the country as the perfect taste and nutrition complement to a bowl of soy-bean paste soup.
The city of Matsue, in pre-modern times the capital of Izumo, sits between the two lakes, on a 7 kilometre long stretch of the Ohashi River. Till the rail connection reached there in 1908, it was a busy port for river, lake, and sea craft. Early 20th century studies of the Nakaumi fish industry listed significant catches of sardines, turbot, rock cod, herring, sea bass, grey mullet, bass, 'konoshiro' herring, black bream, octopus, garfish (sayori), flathead, whiting, trepang, crab, shrimp, goby (hase), eel, carp, clam, ark shell, cockles (shijimi).5 By some accounts there were no less than 155 different varieties in Nakaumi.6 Farmers in the vicinity commonly collected the various grasses (moba or sugamo) from the lake, or the abundance of sardines, and use them as fertilizer, and the waters were so rich that it was said that it was enough for a fisherman to work for one day to be able to eat for three, or that for each bucketful of water, there was a bucketful of fish, or that if one baited ten hooks for eel, one would catch ten eels.7 Lake Shinji was one of the country's major sources of cockles, along with Lake Hachirogata in Niigata and the Tone River just east of Tokyo, but Hachirogata was gradually drained and 17,000 hectares (170 square kilometres) of land reclaimed between 1957 and 1976, while the Tone River, which had once supplied 20,000 tons of cockles to Tokyo annually, was blocked by a barrage cutting off the flow of waters from the sea; today only Shinji remains.8
After the First World War, the bed of the river between the two lakes was dredged to allow the passage of larger, modern vessels, and sections of the lake began to be reclaimed. During the 1920's a three kilometre-long breakwater was built off the port of Sakai Minato. As these works proceeded, signs of disruption in the delicately balanced natural order began to appear: as the flow of sea-water in and out of Nakaumi was impeded, sediment began to build up, and as the natural barrier between the (mostly) fresh-water Shinji and the brackish Nakaumi was removed, salt began to spread through Lake Shinji and to affect adjacent farm land. To cope with that, and to further the development of the region as a whole, various projects were considered during the 1930's, and resumed after the end of the War in 1945. In the early postwar decades, the memory of the semi-starvation to which war and defeat had reduced the country in 1945 was strong, and the search for 'food security', and ways to increase productivity of grain was a major political priority.
In 1963, under the general title of 'National Nakaumi Land Improvement Works', the Ministry of Agriculture launched a series of major works:
Installation of a major sluice gate so that the inflow of sea water into Nakaumi could be regulated and/or blocked; Drainage of around one-quarter of Nakaumi's waters to create an area of 2,540 hectares of new farmland; Progressive reduction in the salination level of the lakes so that the brackish waters would be eventually turned into a huge reservoir (2.7 billion cubic metres) of fresh water); Adaptation of this huge new source of fresh water for agricultural purposes to be used both on the newly drained farmland and the adjacent agricultural land.9
It was a package designed to serve many ends, but in its promise to create both land and water, thereby enhancing food supplies while also weaving a technological net of control over a complex and occasionally troublesome nexus of sea, river and land, it was irresistibly attractive. When the works began in 1963, few had any quibble with either the end or the means. However, the assumptions on which the whole project was based soon changed drastically; what had seemed perfect sense in the early 1960's as the nation mobilized around the goals of 'high growth' and income doubling came to be seen as absolute 'non-sense' in the cold light of low (or zero-) growth, post-bubble Japan.
By 1969, wartime and early post-war food shortages had turned to food sufficiency and then surplus, under-production to over-production, and rice farmers were being urged, and even paid and compensated, to take their fields out of production. Tokyo had shifted from a policy of maximizing self-reliance to one of maximising imports, with food being at the centre of this strategy. By the mid-1990's, nearly 800,000 hectares of rice paddy land was lying idle throughout the country as a direct result of this policy, and in Shimane Prefecture a far greater acreage was being abandoned than stood to be created by the expensive project. Much of the land reclaimed from the lakes over the preceding decade sat idle and deteriorating.10
As the national priority to agriculture of the 1950's was reversed from the 1960's, the idea of high growth industrialization took hold and began to transform the economy even of rural prefectures such as Shimane. Under the Comprehensive National Development Plan (Zenso) of 1962, the designation of 'New Industrial City' or 'New Industrial Region' was attached to those cities or regions designated for key roles under the new plan. Shimane joined the contest to gain the much-desired designation, and eventually was successful in July 1966, when the 'Nakaumi District' was designated a 'New Industrial Region'. As the last of fifteen such regional centres to win the nomination, Nakaumi was assigned an extraordinary future: following massive investment in transport and communications infrastructure, education, power and water, it would become the base for the industrial development of the Japan Sea coast region; the industrial output of the region would grow from 41.5 billion yen in 1960 to 154.6 billion by 1970 ( by four times), and to 397 billion (by 9.6 times) by 1980.11
Like much of the Japanese regional development planning of this time, however, this was a fanciful script devised by bureaucrats rather than actually a plan. It maintained some life during the early 1970's, when Nakaumi was listed as a potential 'middle-scale waterfront industrial base', but the nation's top business leaders were sceptical, when they were not downright opposed, to sites such as Nakaumi being designated a 'New Industrial' region, and few of the designated sites ever realized the promise outlined in these bright bureaucratic dreams of development.12 The bottom line was that the fiscal burden on such communities to provide the necessary infrastructure was immense and commonly could only be met by borrowing, and even after massive public debt s had been incurred private corporations often found no compelling economic reason to re-locate their operations to relatively 'out-of-the-way' places like Nakaumi. After the oil shocks of the 1970's, the grand design of a Nakaumi chemical and heavy industrial complex was quietly abandoned, but the plan to drain and reclaim was not. Instead, the Ministry of Agriculture and the two prefectures began to consider various other designs for what to do with the newly created land. One idea was to substitute dairy farming, silk culture, flower and vegetable production for the initial rice-based plan.13
By 1988, 76 billion yen had been spent and the Nakaumi works were 70 per cent complete, but the further the works advanced, the greater grew the doubts as to their wisdom and need in the changed circumstances.14 With the completion of the series of dikes around the island known as Daikonjima (350 ha) which sat off the north-west shore of Nakaumi, the flow of sea water was reduced to a single aperture, surmounted by the 414 metre-wide Nakaura lock (whose ten gates are to be closed when the signal is given for the drainage to begin). As the flow of waters through Nakaumi was so restricted, especially in the sheltered waters between the Shimane Peninsula and Daikonjima the fish began to die, due to the combination of reduction of flow, proliferation of sediment and of pollutants blocked from discharge into the sea, eutrophication and the spread of 'red tides' and the consequent disappearance of the once bountiful sea grasses. Known as Honjo Sector, this area adjacent to Daikonjima had always been regarded as the richest fishing grounds in the Lake, and therefore the richest fishing grounds in inland Japanese waters. When the Nakaura Lock is turned to stop the flow of sea water altogether, the whole of this Honjo Sector is to be drained and reclaimed.
As the works proceeded, opposition mounted, and quickly spread both locally and nationally. From at least the early 1970's, the national government's Environment Agency took a critical position, as did prominent business leaders, including the heads of the country's main business federations, and from time to time even prominent conservative politicians such as Nakasone Yasuhiro, when head of the Administrative Management Agency in 1981.15 By then, the works were well advanced, and as the realization spread that the closure of the Nakaumi Lock might be imminent the local opposition began to mobilize. From 1981 organizations such as the Lake Shinji Fisheries Cooperative declared their outright opposition to desalinization. The major concern was the effect of the plan on the quality of water in the lakes, but there were also worries over economic losses due to decline in the fishery industry, and to the impact both on local finances and on the local environment in the sense of possibly increased threat of flood damage.16 Lessons from elsewhere were studied with apprehension by the Nakaumi local residents. After the Tone River lock closed off the flow of sea water in 1971, levels of BOD in Lake Kasumigaura (Ibaraki Prefecture) more than trebled and the fish and shijimi in the lake all died.17 Public opinion surveys found a massive majority opposed to the project, and the proportion in favour oscillating between nine and fifteen per cent. In 1984-5 a petition of opposition was signed by 320,000 people, more than half the population of the towns and cities affected. By 1985, 70 per cent of Nakaumi suffered from oxygen depletion for a full nine months, from March to December.18 Once one of the most popular swimming spots on the Japan Sea coast, swimming had often to be forbidden for health reasons from the 1970's.19 Shinji's 'harvest' of cockles was in steady decline, ark shells (asari), once supplying 60 per cent of the entire Japanese market, had disappeared, and the number of confirmed varieties of fish in Nakaumi had been drastically reduced, with popular species such as plaice, turbot and flathead disappearing.20 A study commissioned by the Ministry predicted that the most important fish and crustacean resources of the lake, including cockles, would not survive 'closure'.21 In 1988 a call for an ordinance to protect the local environment, in other words to stop the works, was signed by 43 per cent of the people of the lake-side constituencies, and as the movement gathered strength one neighbouring town council (located on the Tottori prefectural side), Yonago, unanimously called for the issue to be put to a local referendum.22
Under these pressures, the project underwent a major transformation: the 1,700 hectare Honjo Sector works were suspended, although other sectors continued. There was no precedent at this time for a major public works programme being blocked, or even significantly modified, by public pressure, although some, such as the construction of the New Tokyo International Airport at Narita, had been much delayed and occasioned widespread disturbances. What happened at Nakaumi in 1988 was, therefore, immensely significant; the bureaucrats were at least partially and temporarily blocked. The desalination works were frozen, and the process of draining and reclamation confined to relatively minor sections of the lake. A joint advisory committee was established, representing the Ministry of Agriculture and the two prefectures (Tottori and Shimane).
From 1988 to 1995 a stalemate continued. The Joint Advisory Committee submitted its report in October 1990, recommending that, for the usable block of 1,400 hectares at the heart of the Honjo sector, 500 be set aside for agricultural purposes, and 900 for the creation of an 'international resort city' which would combine research, especially in the natural sciences, with tourism, sports, etc.23 This was a tacit recognition at the official level that the project could no longer be justified in terms of the need to expand food supply. The vision of transformation into an industrial base had also long faded. The new vision epitomized the thinking of the 1980's 'bubble' in terms of aspiration to shift the focus of economic expansion into the resort and leisure sector. The 'Technopolis' and the 'Resort' were the two favoured growth patterns of the bubble years, both known in retrospect for their signally high rate of failure and their large contribution to the accumulation of public debt, rather than for their positive accomplishments. In the context of the late 1980's, however, it is not surprising that the case for reclamation of these lakes shifted from agriculture to 'hi-tech' and 'hi-touch'.
The works were suspended for seven years, during which time the case against them strengthened and the movement grew more resolute. Since the absurdity of the huge and expensive public effort to create new land, nominally at least for agricultural purposes, was obvious, the announcement by the Shimane Governor in December 1995 that, despite the transformed circumstances, the project would be revived, caused widespread shock and indignation. Despite the avowed interest in political and bureaucratic circles in turning the new land into either a 'Silicon Valley' technopolis or a 'Disneyland'-type resort, however, the initial terms of the national project, to create new land for agricultural purposes, could not be ignored, and so the formal recommendation for re-opening of the project was couched in highly unconvincing terms of agricultural policy.
From 1995 the Shimane Governor's office, strongly backed by local business interests, took the key role in pushing to re-open the works. It was plainly difficult to justify the project in anything like its initial terms, but the case that Governor Sumita (Nobuyoshi) put forward had to be based on agricultural considerations. A powerful argument based on fiscal concerns was also developed to reinforce it. He began to talk of the problems of global food-shortage looming in the coming century, and of the building of a cattle industry, and of the possibilities of large-scale dry-land farming, including specifically cabbage and 'white spring onions' (shironegi), a prospect he believed might be attractive enough to draw back significant numbers of young people to settle in the district.24 The argument on fiscal grounds was based on the contention that it might be cheaper to proceed to completion of the works, and then recover at least some of the costs by sale of the new land, than to stop and permanently freeze them, or to undertake the task of demolishing the existing works and 'restoring' the lakes. So far, the prefecture had spent just over 50 billion yen, completion as planned would require a minimum of an additional 30 billion, and probably another 100 billion on top of that to reclaim the whole of the designated area. If the works were stopped, Sumita argued that the people of the prefecture might find themselves obliged to repay, with interest, all moneys received from central government sources, that is to say actually borrowed from the people's savings under the so-called 'Fiscal Investment and Loan Plan'.25 Sumita returned constantly to this theme of the impropriety of abandoning a project already in such an advanced state, although in a newspaper discussion with Hobo Takehiko, Shimane University professor and prominent opponent of the project, he conceded that, under present circumstances, a project such as the Nakaumi works would be most unlikely ever to get off the ground.26
As the Governor and his associates relied on these two key arguments, however, insisting that the project was worthy of being considered the 'grand plan of the century' (hyakunen no taikei),27 the opposition movement that had been temporarily victorious in blocking the project in 1988 entrenched itself locally, while also developing influential national and political linkages. The anti-works case was developed and refined out of countless public seminars, workshops, pamphlets, and petitions, and innumerable hours of voluntary, painstaking effort aimed at generating democratically a vision of local economy and ecology.
They begin by dismissing the Governor's agricultural argument. Late 20th century Japan was undeniably dependent on the food producers of a vast region, including both the techno-farmers of Californian agribusiness and the small farmers of East and Southeast Asia, but the scale of the Nakaumi reclamation was far too tiny to make any significant impact on this, even if there really was such an intention on the part of government and bureaucracy. To produce domestically the 40 million tons of fodder consumed by Japanese domestic livestock would require an additional twelve million hectares of land, the equivalent of the whole of Japan; in such scale the projected Nakaumi reclamation would amount truly to 'chicken feed'.28 Furthermore, the idea that a Nakaumi beef industry could be established which would contribute to Japan's food self-sufficiency flew in the face of the fact that the beef industry was highly dependent on imported corn fodder, while the other commercially viable local products "things like ginseng, peony, and tobacco" likewise had little relevance to global food problems.
Perhaps the most telling point made by critics of the plan is that fishing grounds of potentially greater economic significance and unquestionable environmental sustainability were to be destroyed, and indeed had already been partially, although probably not irrevocably, destroyed, to achieve the dubious benefits promised. It is enough to read the accounts given by local fishermen and residents, remembering the teeming abundance of the lake they once knew, to appreciate the obsessive and irrational quality of the bureaucratic commitment to drain and reclaim, and to understand some of the growing anger of the local communities. As Honda Katsuichi, well-known journalist and critic of the project, argued in a discussion with Governor Sumita, it is precisely Japan's river-mouths and brackish coastal lakes that traditionally provided the richest sources of calcium and protein for Japan's common people, and as the global competition for the resources of the high seas intensified, such domestic sites would become ever more precious.29 Even in contemporary market terms, Shimane University's Hobo Takehiko estimated that the fishing industry makes far better sense than the prospective grazing industry. The Shimane Prefecture's published plan for the reclaimed land (March 1996) estimated a gross agricultural income for the Honjo site of 5.3 billion yen, of which actual 'income' (after deduction of costs) would be about 900 million. If the fishery industry was re-established in the once teeming lake waters, a gross income of about 1.3 billion would be enough to yield an equivalent sum, and the view of fishery experts is that such a goal would be quite realistic.30 In other words, if a small part of the effort directed at the reclamation works were to be turned to helping the traditional fishing industry of the lake to recover, the contribution to feeding the people of the 21st century would be at least no less than that achieved by drainage and reclamation, and the economic returns could be just as great, without the environmental disruption. Commonly, however, the bureaucratic framework for thinking about 'modernity' and for setting the objectives of development has been drawn uncritically from the very different Western context. If the 21st century does, as Governor Sumita believes is possible, prove to be a time of food shortage, it is likely to be Japan's current access to 28 per cent of global marine products which will come under threat as world stocks in the main ocean fisheries are depleted.31
There are also serious concerns about the deterioration in quality of the water in the lakes. Despite the ultimate promise of an enormous new supply of fresh water promised by the project, a continuing deterioration in water quality both in the lakes and in the adjacent ground-water was feared to be more likely. Few were reassured by the prefecture's assurances on this count, and the Ministry of the Environment in Tokyo has ordered further studies, while the flourishing community of 5,000 who live on Daikon Island, a delicate volcanic structure with a circumference of a mere 6 kilometres which abuts the Honjo works site, fears that the precious supply of fresh water contained within the island's cone might even leak out as the works continue, devastating their economy.32 Opposition to the works is almost total in such communities.33
On the fiscal question, opponents have no real counter to the Governor's dire projections, save to say that it makes no sense to throw good money after bad; if the project is better not continued, then a final full-stop should be put and whatever adjustments are necessary be made.
But even deeper issues are involved, for the evidence is that the resumption of works which the Governor is urging is massively unpopular. The opinion surveys have long recorded very negative popular views of the project.34 By the mid-1990Õs, a maximum of 21 to 24 per cent were in favour of the project, a proportion which slowly declined as the Governor revealed a progressively more uncompromising stance and as the opposition movement widened and deepened its support base.35 A June 1996 survey by the Asahi Shimbunfound that opposition was running at 51 and 54 per cent respectively in Shimane and Tottori prefectures, with only 22 and 12 per cent respectively being in support, and only one per cent agreeing with the Governor that it was necessary to create agricultural land by reclamation.36 A petition calling for a poll of local residents was organized during 1996 and quickly gathered the necessary support to be formally presented to the Governor, continuing to amass well over half a million signatures by March 1997, enough for the Ministry of Agriculture to have to say that it 'could not ignore' it as an expression of local sentiment.37 The Governor, however, remained adamant, insisting that it was his constitutional and legal responsibility to make the decision. Protest meetings drew unprecedented gatherings of up to 1,600 people (in August 1996), with all political parties other than the LDP represented, and with the Nakaumi issue coming to be seen nationally as symbolic of the uncontrolled excesses of public works and their environmental damage. In the October 1996 general elections, pro-dam candidates from the lake-side electorates won 31 per cent of the vote, opposition candidates 68 percent.38
During 1996 not only did the six non-LDP parties and the national media gradually turn to embrace the anti-Nakaumi works cause, but even senior ministers in Tokyo made statements critical of the project and its prefectural backing. The major financial daily, Nihon keizai shimbun (7 January), declared that 'There should be no development plan in a democratic society which is not able to be chosen by the local people' and the Mainichi shimbun in an editorial described the project as 'a stupidity filled with policy contradictions'. The Environment Ministry described the report emanating from the Shimane Governor's office as 'not enough to stand up to any expert assessment'. The Minister, Mr Iwatare Sukio, declared that he would do 'everything within my powers' on the matter, and on 18 March ordered a further investigation of water quality in the lakes. The Minister of Agriculture, Mr Ohara, stated (26 April) that the prefecture could not just say dismiss these demands without explaining itself and getting a positive response from the people resident in the district, while the immensely powerful Minister of Finance, Mr Kubo Wataru, on 26 April declared that, on the eve of what had been declared to be 'Year One of Fiscal Reconstruction', the country did not have the reserves to proceed with plans not wanted by the local people.39 When a 'Dietmen's Association to Protect Lakes Nakaumi and Shinji' was formed in February 1997, its advisers included two former Prime Ministers (Hata and Murayama) and some of the leading figures from all the non-LDP parties.40
At Nakaumi, as at the Nagara River barrage (in Mie prefecture), the Nibutani Dam (in Hokkaido), and the Isahaya Barrage (in Nagasaki Prefecture), the accumulated contradictions of public works policy have come to a head. Younger bureaucrats are aware of the growing pressures for change and of the anomaly of Japanese practice, particularly on water issues, among advanced industrial countries, but the challenge of contradicting their bureaucratic seniors, their sempai, is considerable, and the fear of undermining the finely articulated national system of bureaucratic-led government also inhibits them. To negate something to which their seniors and predecessors have committed themselves over three decades is enormously difficult, and the difficulty is compounded by the billions of yen of public monies that have been poured into the project. To 'build' has been the point of public works; how now can it be possible deliberately to demolish what has been built? The 'works' are large and conspicuous, and the manipulation of nature is a sort of engineering triumph. The symbolic significance of a decision to abandon them, in due course to demolish them, is very heavy, and the ramified bureaucratic system resists it, but at some point the public works juggernaut, which has reduced Japan's finances to parlous state while devastating the national environment, will have to be halted: the question is where and when. At places like Nakaumi, the interest politics of the bureaucratic-construction industry- entrenched Liberal-Democratic Party local political machine has come up square against Japan's maturing civil society.
This project, originally designed to increase national food self-sufficiency in rice, has developed into one that is destroying a major fishing industry and diminishing sustainability. Reflecting shifts in emphasis on the part of the national planners in Tokyo, the rationale for Nakaumi has shifted over the decades: from the national need to create additional fields to grow rice to the idea of building a heavy and chemical industrial base, to growing flowers and vegetables, to building a new city that would combine elements of a technopolis and a resort: but the drive to build has never faltered. The purpose of construction is construction itself. Despite the shifts in purpose and zig-zags in representation, despite the scepticism and outright opposition of business, media and academic leaders, and the continued criticisms levied by the Environment Agency, and in particular despite the strength of local opposition, the juggernaut project rolls on.
1 See map. return to text
2 Kawana Hideyuki, 'Nakaumi Shinjiko no tansuika mondai', Dokyumento - Nihon no kogai, vol 7, Dai kibo kaihatsu, Ryokufu shuppan, 1992, 247-326, at pp. 248-9. return to text
3 This resume account of details from the Izumo fudoki taken from Naito Masanaka, 'Nakaumi Shinjiko shuhen chiiki ni okeru sangyo no shiteki tenkai', in Shimane daigaku kisuiiki kenkyu senta, ed, Nakaumi Shinjiko to sono ryuiki - yutaka na shizen to bu nka o mirai ni ikasu, Matsue, 1993, pp. 113-138, at 123-5. return to text
4 The Izumo chroniclers also list local fauna, including bears, wolves, boars, deer, rabbit, fox, flying squirrel and monkey, and bird-life including eagle, falcon, dove, pheasant, lark, quail, thrush, hawk, grosbeak, wild geese, gull, swan and mandarin duck. return to text
5 Details of fish catch at the various fishing ports on Nakaumi as of the first decade of the 20th century given at Naito, p. 129. return to text
6 Jumin asesu "Shirabeyou! Minna de Nakaumi" kikaku, 'Sakai minato shi Sotoe no gyoshi no minasan kara no kikitori', 10 May 1996, in Utsukushii Nakaumi o mamoru jumin kaigi, ed, Shirabeyou! Minna de Nakaumi, vol 1, 31 January 1997, p. 22. return to text
7 Shirabeyou, pp 38-9, 53, 77, 106. return to text
8 Naito, p. 153. return to text
9 Hobo Takehiko, 'Nakaumi tochi kairyo jigyo o meguru jumin undo', Toshi mondai, October 1996, pp. 1-7, at p. 1. And for a detailed account of the origins and evolution of the plan, Kawana, pp. 248ff. return to text
10 Hobo Takehiko, 'Nakaumi kantaku no saikai o fusegu tame ni', Shukan kinyobi, 31 May 1996, pp, 14-17; also Hobo, 1 December 1995, p. 16. return to text
11 Kawana, p. 262. return to text
12 Kawana, p. 266; Miyamoto Ken'ichi, 'Kokyo jigyo no kokyosei to kankyoken', Kankyo to kogai, vol 26, no 1, Summer 1996, pp. 2-7, at p. 4. return to text
13 A 1971 plan: for details, see Kawana, pp. 264-5. return to text
14 Hobo Takehiko, 'Sore de mo kankyo hakai no jigyo ha ugoku', Shukan kinyobi, 1 December 1995, pp. 14-16. return to text
15 Kawana, pp. 261, 266ff. return to text
16 Kawana, p. 275; Hobo, 'Nakaumi tochi kairyo ...', p. 2. return to text
17 Kawana, pp. 282-3. return to text
18 Shirabeyou, p. 53. return to text
19 Shirabeyou, p. 54. return to text
20 Shirabeyou, p. 54. The precise dimensions of the decline are disputed. There were still 77 different varieties, according to Shirabeyou ..., pp. 14-15, but Kuwana cites a source to the effect that in 1984 only 56 varieties could be confirmed, compared to an average in other inland lakes of 19. (Kuwana, p. 284). All sources attest to steady and continuing decline. return to text
21 See table in Kawana, p. 285. return to text
22 Hobo, ibid, p. 2. return to text
23 Hobo, 1 December 1995, p. 15. return to text
24 Sumita Nobuyoshi and Hobo Takehiko, 'Nakaumi kantaku ha hitsuyo ka', Asahi shimbun, 24 April 1996. return to text
25 Ibid. return to text
26 ibid. return to text
27 quoted in Hobo, 'Nakaumi tochi kairyo ...', p. 5. return to text
28 Hara Takeshi, '"Kankyo to kyosei" no shakai e okii na ippo o', Shukan kinyobi, 31 May 1996, pp. 18-20, at p.20. return to text
29 Sumita Nobuyoshi and Honda Katsuichi, 'Nakaumi kantaku jigyo saikai shi hatachi ni aru hitsuyo ga aru no ka', Shukan kinyobi, 9 August 1996, pp. 68-71. return to text
30 Hobo, 'Nakaumi tochi kairyo jigyo ...', p. 6. return to text
31 Hobo, 'Nakaumi kantaku no saikai ...', p. 16. return to text
32 'Naze ima nakaumi kantaku', part 2, Asahi shimbun, 3 July 1996. return to text
33 Hobo, 'Sore demo kankyo hakai ...', Shukan kinyobi, 1 December 1995, pp. 15-16. return to text
34 Kawana, passim. return to text
35 For results of surveys in August and October 1995 and February 1996 (by NHK, Sanin Central TV, and Mainichi shimbun respectively), see Hobo, 'Nakaumi kantaku no saikai ...', p. 15. return to text
36 'Nakaumi no mirai watakushitachi ga erabu', Asahi shimbun, 15 June 1996. return to text
37 Hobo Takehiko, 'Shinjiko Nakaumi kantaku mondai', Shukan kinyobi, 7 March 1997, pp. 30-31. return to text
38 ibid, p. 31. return to text
39 Various sources, cited in Hobo, 'Nakaumi kantaku no saikai ...', p. 15, and (concerning the Ministry of Agriculture) 'Naze ima Nakaumi kantaku', part 2, Asahi shimbun, 3 July 1996. return to text
40 Hobo, 'Shinjiko Nakaumi ...', Shukan kinyobi, 7 March 1997, pp.30-31, at p. 30. 10 return to text
This paper was originally
published by the Kyoto Journal,
1998 (KJ#37)