Ruining and Restoring Rivers
The State and Civil Society in Japan
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2870633 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul Waley (0000-0002-2405-2353, University of Leeds, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 78 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 195-215 |
| Publication date | 2005-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Pacific Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0030-851X • E-ISSN: 1715-3379 |
| Publisher | Pacific Affairs (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5509/2005782195 |
| OpenAlex | W2331137213 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
R ivers in Japan and Currents in Civil Society The postwar history of Japan can be seen in terms of the inexorable march of development through construction (generally in concrete).1 Much of the resulting conflict has focussed on struggles over water, in its various forms and attributes. It has also played itself out against the backdrop of an immense transformation in the human and physical landscape of postwar Japan. Large-scale migration to cities has been accompanied by almost total urbanization and industrialization of coastal areas. At the same time, rivers and their banks, as well as over half the country’s coast, has been cast in concrete, with consequences that are only now being acknowledged. Dams were built across nearly all of Japan’s rivers to provide power for industry, as well as water for the cities and irrigation for farmers. The combination of steep and thickly wooded mountain slopes and packed but productive plains, consisting largely of paddy fields, combined to form a potent protection force against flooding, but with urbanization in the flood plains and widespread reforestation to conifers in the mountains, the land lost its absorptive capacity. Japan’s rivers flood easily; they are generally quite short, rushing down narrow valleys before wandering sluggishly through alluvial flood plains, where in the summer months, swollen by seasonal rains, they are liable to burst their banks. All told, the presence of water is as remarkable a feature of the Japanese landscape as is the presence of mountains. Equally remarkable, however, is the aesthetic impoverishment of the landscape resulting from the encasement of rivers. The dramatically manipulated landscape of rivers, their beds, banks and flood plains serves as a setting to the issues that are examined in this paper. These concern civil society, especially in the context of a rise in volunteer activity in recent years, a growth that both coincided with and was spurred
Civil society · Environmental ethics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · Computer Science · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Socioeconomic Development in Asia
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,35 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2020 (12) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |