Monitored: a visit from Japan's Forestry Agency

Image source: Makino, H. and M. Mitsuo (1953).

付知川に於ける材木伐出の沿革と檜解 (History of timber extraction in Tsukuchigawa).
Tsukuchigawa, 付知川営林署 (Tsukuchigawa Forest Management Office).

As I mentioned in my last post, a recent article in a Nagano newspaper, the Shinano-mainichi-shinbun 信濃毎日新聞, about my research and recent paper presentation in Philadelphia promoted the local Forestry Agency office to give me a call and set up a time to talk. Yesterday, I met with two officials from the Forestry Agency: the heads of the Agematsu 上松 and Setogawa 瀬戸川 offices (the latter is located here in Otaki).

I've used the word "monitor" in the title of this post and I intend the full range of meaning that the word embodies--from innocent watching to menacing surveillance. It seems to me this is the nature of monitoring; one never knows how closely they are being watched, or to what ends. In this instance monitoring came to mind for two reasons: 1) the swiftness with which the Forestry Agency suddenly expressed interest in my research, and 2) the sense I gained of the Forestry Agency's desire to closely control information about National Forests.

As concerns reason number one, the Forestry Agency contacted me the day after I returned from Philadelphia; they were eager to chat. To explain reason number two I'll briefly discuss the meeting we had yesterday.

I had met each of the two officials that came to visit me yesterday. The head of the Agematsu office (the senior of the two) I had met at a function hosted by Asahi Beer, who sponsors some forest maintenance projects in the village. The head of the local Seto-gawa office I had met previously when I went to interview him as part of my research. In our meeting the senior official did all of the talking, while his junior took notes. We sat across from each other--the two of them on one side and me on the other--in a small meeting room at the school I work at here in Otaki.

The senior official began by explaining that they were interested in hearing about my paper presentation. What seemed to be of particular interest to the official was how forests in the Kiso Valley and the Forestry Agency were perceived by other scholars in America (since I had presented at the American Anthropological Association meeting). This intrigued me. Why the concern over the "external gaze". . .perhaps the agency also feels monitored.

I explained my research a bit. I talked about forest history and changing conceptions of landscapes and the impact on local residents as actors and potential actors in arrangements of co-governance. I tried to emphasize the point that I do not think the Forestry Agency is useless, but that current governing arrangements are too lopsided and that there is room for more local involvement in forest governance. It seems to me this last part is the hard part for the Forestry Agency to swallow. I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that they are low on the governmental totem pole at this point and therefore feel threatened in their position. Again, I don't know this for sure and plan to look into it more.

The senior official next asked me if I thought that I had been misrepresented in the article that was published about me. I explained that since I am conducting research that will become a 200-300 page disseration, that yes, a 250 word article was likely a misrepresentation. However, I also suggested that I agreed with what was said in the article (the need for more local involvement in governance). The official explained to me that the Forestry Agency is also wrestling with issues of local involvement and that a 5 year plan for forests in the Matsumoto area (city about 90 kilometers north of Otaki) will include a survey of local citizens. He went on to explain that the 5 year plan for the Kiso Valley will come out a year later and will also have a similar component. "Good stuff," I thought, "but enough?"

"Hopefully you can look at those when the come out," he concluded. I told him that I'd love to and that up until now I had done most of my research about the Forestry Agency online and admitted that I had done little 'face-to-face' work, which I view as a bias in my research. He took this opportunity to explain that there are a lot of people on the ground doing forestry work and that it is hard to get a sense of it. Just as it is hard to get a sense of the history of a particular village like Otaki. He wondered if I really understood the whole system. Admittedly, I don't--no one does. . .and that's my main argument for more local involvement. All of this is too complex for any one of us to get a grasp on alone. So why leave governance and management solely up to a single agency? At this point in my notes I wrote: "Mr. ________ is trying to tell me that I don't know." I found, and find, this position quite paternalistic and see it as an attempt to control information about the agency and about forests in Otaki. I had heard this sentiment once previously, during my interview with the junior official who had told me that Forest Agency personnel know more about the forests than local people, with the implication that co-governance makes little sense.

Our meeting wrapped up soon after this. Bows and thank yous were exchanged with a slight air of awkwardness. I told the officials that I'd like to have a chance to come talk with them again and do more research. It's something I hope to do.

So, what does this little event tell us? Well. . .I don't know really. For me "monitoring" immediately came to mind and is a concept that I hope to explore further in this context. Foucault's theories of power, which I have been using to think about socio-natural environmental change here in Otaki, complicate ideas of monitoring by teasing out the subtle ways that actors are MONITORED, but also how they MONITOR themselves and each other. This is intriguing to me in that my opinions about the Forestry Agency developed partly out of conversations with local residents. However, I've yet to hear any comments about the newspaper article that prompted this meeting. Perhaps talking about such things is something that local residents don't feel willing to or capable of doing. Monitoring?

Talking about different ways of living in the environment is the first step. . .yet, perhaps the hardest.

Post-Philadelphia: the writing life

As anyone who glances even intermittently at this blog will know. . .my posting prowess has all but non-existent as of late. I will blame this on "the writing life". Since mid-October perhaps (I don't remember exactly) I have been living this life. Writing. Preparing funding applications and presentations for two conferences.

In November I attended and presented a paper at the Anthropology of Japan in Japan (AJJ) conference at Temple University Japan and this last week I attended and presented a paper at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) meeting in Philadelphia (hence the Liberty Bell picture).

I've debated putting the paper that I presented online, because it still feels like a work in progress. But, think I'll go ahead and do it. . .perhaps some feedback will come my way (but be nice please).

Before I left for Philadelphia a newspaper reporter from a Nagano prefecture paper known as the shinano-mainichi-shinbun 信濃毎日新聞 came to Otaki to interview me about my research. The article came out in the December 12th edition of the paper. Apparently it was noticed because the day after I returned from Philadelphia I received a call from the local Foresty Agency office asking if they could come talk to me about my research. I'm a bit nervous about the meeting because I was critical of the agency in the interview and this came through in the article. However, I hope that something good will come out of the meeting. At least my research has been noticed! There's a desire among many Japanese to maintain social harmony. . .it's seen as a virtue. But, not being Japanese, I'm perfectly happy to stir up the social stew.

I'll defer to Cactus Ed again.

"Society is like a stew.
If you don't keep it stirred up,
you get a lot of scum on top."

I'll update after I meet with the Forestry Agency folks on Monday.

A map of common ground

This bill increases wildness, protects endangered species, and detoxifies — once and for all — the word “wilderness.”

In an op-ed piece by Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, writer Rick Bass offers a look at the collaborative process that has resulted in the “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act” (known as the "Tester Bill" after Senator Jon Tester", which would be the first wilderness legislation, the author claims, in Montana in 26 years. Find the original op-ed here.

I would love to see such collaboration here in Otaki Village. In a recent Asahi Shimbun 朝日新聞 article (no longer available online, but I can send copies to anyone interested--Japanese only), the author quotes residents as saying that national forests are "foreign country" and that local people have little or no say in management decisions. On the other hand, officials from the forestry agency are quoted in the article as saying that they consult with village residents once and a while and that they are listened to. Obviously there is a disconnect.

The quote at the top of this post is from Rick Bass. I like his choice of words when he talks about "detoxifying" the concept of wilderness. I'm not sure if it is his intention, but I'd like to think that he is posing a critique of "wilderness" as it is used in the U.S., as an area untouched by humans. In Japan, it's 自然 shizen, usually translated as "nature", that is the conceptual stumbling block that impedes discussions of how to best use lands.

Terms like "wilderness" or "shizen", with there associated conceptual baggage, are too easily grasped upon, purified, politicized and used by one group or another to forward their own agenda while attempting to intellectually pulverize "opposing" agendas. It seems to me akin to the increasingly willy-nilly use of the term "Nazi" to express dissent of the Obama administration's healthcare proposal.

Good democracies, like good ecologies, demand open space and diversity. Our human languages, unfortunately, are often not geared to this. It's important to employ critique and self-reflexivity to make sure that we don't get bogged down in the world of words. . .which is often much more complex than the physical world.

The evolving debate over devolution.

Today the wonderfully insightful and remarkably detailed blog, AMPONTAN, contained a post outlining the growing debate among Japanese politicians over "devolution". The term refers to the simplification of Japan's current system of governance based on provinces and municipalities, as well as a centralized government.

Find the original post here.

I'm not sure how I feel about the prospect of devolution. I like the idea of more power and control at the regional level, but wonder if this will extend to the local level. Also, I fear the idea of a bureaucratically slim, yet powerful central government--more authority concentrated in fewer places.

Would be interested to hear thoughts.

Resource extraction in Otaki

Last week I made a short presentation about my fieldwork during an anthropology seminar at Kyoto University. The paper I presented covers some of my early thoughts about thinking of landscape transformation in the context of resource extraction.


Resource extraction and landscape transformation in Otaki

Today, many of Japan’s rural areas are in a state of crisis. Rapid depopulation, lack of capital investment, and the withdrawal of government assistance have left rural communities with few options; many have amalgamated with neighboring municipalities under a program meant to simplify the national bureaucracy. Those communities that have been unwilling or unable to amalgamate have, for the most part, been left on their own to maintain basic services while trying to find sustainable paths into the future. The situation has left these communities economically and politically disadvantaged, as well as environmentally and socially vulnerable. The historic presence of these asymmetric relationships has ensured that the phenomenon of extraction of both natural and human resources from rural communities has been a common occurrence during the formation of capitalist modes of production in modern Japan. (continue reading).

Becoming "アルプス"

The blog One Hundred Mountains recently contained a post Weighing up Walter Weston, that explores the validity of Weston's title as "the father of the Japanese Alps".

Weston's place in Japanese history has a lot to do with what was happening in Japan at the time as the Meiji government was creating a political space that required a reconfiguring of the entire landscape. Berkeley geographer Karen Wigen takes up this topic and argues that the mountains of central Japan were "discovered" as the alps (アルプス) and reconfigured to meet the political and social needs of the Meiji regime.

Here is the full reference

Wigen K. 2005. Discovering the Japanese Alps: Meiji Mountaineering and the Quest for Geographical Enlightenment. Journal of Japanese Studies 31

If anyone wants the article, but can't find it online, I can email a PDF.

環境整備: Maintaining the Environment

Otaki is literally being engulfed by the forest. Abandoned fields and plots of forest have quickly become overgrown and wildlife has moved in. The areas of thick forest are also unappealing to most villagers, giving them a sense of becoming enclosed.

For these reasons, residents of Otaki participate in 環境整備作業 (environmental maintenance/management/improvement activities--something like that). Yesterday, I finally had a chance to participate in one of these projects: clearing weeds and trees from along the prefectural road that leads from Makio Dam to Otaki.

There were only about 10 of us there that day, which isn't bad for a village of 1,000, where a third of the population is over 65 years of age.

It was a hard day of work, but they let me use a chainsaw, so I had no complaints. I don't know what the organizers were thinking. Also, I think my chainsaw skills were being whispered about. Ah, I'm the egghead; not supposed to be too proficient with such tools.

With such a rapidly aging population, I wonder about how long Otaki can keep the forest held back. I'm amazed at how active the elderly residents are, but there's simply too much land to be managed.

Combine this trend of decline in rural areas with the rapid sprawl of Japan's urban areas and you get a frightful prospect indeed--huge swaths of unmanaged forest butted up against cities. I think it's time for politicians and the general public in Japan to begin recognizing this growing problem.

In the meantime, here in Otaki we'll keep maintaining.

Monkeys on the Move

"I fell down right in my field and just started crying."

These were the words of a neighbor here in Otaki, describing the experience of finding that about 100 stalks of corn she planted had been carried raided by monkeys; the ears of sweet corn devoured.

These words came to mind as I scoured over various reports this morning about monkeys causing trouble in oddly different places in Japan. Most of the reports were about a monkey that was discovered in Shibuya station in the heart of Tokyo.

The Japan Times article.
Mainichi Daily News article.
Guardian U.K. video.
Japan Probe blog.

One report from the Mainichi Daily News (article here), however, talked about Uozu, a municipality in Toyoma prefecture that has recently armed civil servants with shotguns to boost numbers for its "Harmful Wildlife Hunting Corps". In the report the mayor of the city is quoted as saying:

"It's easy for staff to help out with the extermination even during weekday working hours. Anything to reduce the damage just a little."

What's with all the monkeys?

Japanese monkeys are called macaques (Macaca fuscata fuscata; there is also a subspecies, Macaca fuscata yakui , which are only found on Yakushima, an island in the south of Japan). Macaques play a prominent role in the Japanese landscape--not only the natural, but also the social. Anthropologists Ohnuki-Tierney argues that macaques occupy a prevalent space in Japanese conceptions of self; she suggests that they serve as a metaphor for humans because of the great amount of group behavior they exhibit--a trait viewed in Japan as essential to being human.

Another anthropologist, John Knight, picked up on Ohnuki-Tierney's theme in his study of human-wildlife conflicts in Hongu-cho, Wakayama prefecture. Knight suggests that the close proximity of macaques and humans in rural areas, like Hongu-cho, produce a variety of often contradictory emotions on the part of residents. During his fieldwork, macaques were often spoken of in criminalistic terms because of the damage they inflict to crops. Macaques were referred to as dorobou (theives) who nusumu (steal). At the same time, due to their organized group behavior macaques were talked about in militaristic terms with a sense of respect Residents referred to saru gundan (monkey armies) with taishou (generals) and suggested that they strategized in picking targets and executing raids.

I've witnessed a similar phenomenon here in Otaki. On the one hand, I often hear quotes like the one above; residents are frustrated and worried about crop damage caused by macaques. However, on the other hand, I also hear macaques praised for their tenacity and wit. Just today one of the best hunters in the village talked me about how macaques have become smarter recently.

What's clear is that macaque populations are increasing and that their habitat is decreasing. There are several factors contributing to this. First and foremost, forest conversion from broadleaf to pine (mostly timber) tree varities, has created a lack of forage for macaque populations. Second, the extermination of the Japanese wolf around the turn of the century means that there are no longer any significant carnivorous predator species in Japan. Third, bans on hunting macaques, along with a general decline in the number of hunters in Japan, has allowed macaques to move more easily into residential areas. Fourth, massive rural depopulation has meant an increase in forested land near residential areas as fields are abandoned and allowed to grow wild. Finally, rapid sprawl eminating from Japan's metropolises have brough urban areas closer and closer to macaque habitat.

The result. . .monkeys on the move. Japan's being overrun by macaques. I must note that it has been suggested that that monkey found in Shibuya may have come from a zoo-park in Tokyo, but the veracity of this suggestion does not invalidate my point. In fact, in an article entitled, Monkey mountain as a megazoo, Knight also explores the phenomenon of monkey parks in Japan where macaques are baited with food for the purpose of tourism.

Clearly something needs to be done. Arming civil servants with shotguns is one approach--and, oddly, probably the most logical measure that can be taken at this point. In the long run, a more reasonable approach would be to begin managing Japan's forestlands (which occupy 67% of the country) in a way that takes into account the ecological needs of animal species such as macaques. As it is now the Forest Agency (rinnyachou 林野庁) is dominated by the continued employment of out-dated German techniques for producing timber. This approach is legitimized most recently through assinine appeals to discourses of climate change and the need for carbon sinks. Not that measures to combat climate change are not needed; they are. Hoewever, a better approach would be for the people of Japan to sustainably manage and utilize domestic forests, and to curtail consumption of overseas timber (which, to follow the logic of the climate change argument, often comes from forests reconized for their ability to absorb carbon).

Obviously, climate change is an important issue; one that needs to be addressed. However, in Japan this shouldn't be done blindly with the simple notion that the more trees the better. Local communities, who are facing the brunt of poor ecological decisions concerning forestlands, need to be more involved in decision making processes. Japan's urban population needs to begin recognizing the role that rural communities play and find better ways to support them. Otherwise, the monkey's are gonna take the place over.


Knight, John. 2006. Monkey Mountain as a Megazoo: Analyzing the Naturalistic
Claims of “Wild Monkey Parks” in Japan. Society & Animals 14:3.

Knight, John. 2003. Waiting for Wolves in Japan: An Anthropological Study of Human-Wildlife Relations. Oxford University Press,
New York.

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 1987. The Monkey as Metaphor for the Japanese.
Chapter 2 In The Monkey as Mirror. Pp. 20-38. Princeton University Press.
Princeton, NJ.

A Japan of regions. . .what of the local?

(Hihata S. 1878. Kaisei Shinano no kuni saiken zenzu: zen. [Nagano] : Nishizawa Kitaro)

In a continuation of municipal amalgamations that have been occurring since the Meiji Restoration (1868) , there is new talk of eliminating Japan's current 47 prefectures and creating about a dozen "regions". See Japan Times article here.

Though the argument is made that creating large regions will allow for greater decentralization and local autonomy, one wonders why it is always the centers of political and economic power, rather than local communities, that push for such structural reforms.

Through an examination of the post-war land reform from the perspective of the central government and its contradictory needs to promote economic growth while maintaining its constituency of small-scale farmers. Mary McDonald* has argued that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP 自民党) has preserved some of the principles of land reform while gradually reregulating agricultural land to allow for new capital formation both external and internal to agriculture. Preservation has come with slow movements towards capital expansion that have allowed arable lands to stay largely in the hands of a spatially diverse constituency and also through price supports for key crops, namely rice. In this way Japan’s conservative regime has worked its way slowly towards a new constituency by appeasing expansionist voices from urban areas while promoting a switch to producer focused (rather than household) landholding in the key rural areas.

In other words, the post-war period has seen a political balancing act played out over the landscape as LDP leaders have worked to increase economic growth in urban areas while appeasing their rural base. However, it seems now that the scale is tipping. Massive depopulation of rural areas (with accompanying migration to urban areas) along with a rapidly aging popuation means that protecting the countryside is less and less of a political or economic necessity.

From the perspective of local communities, this move towards regionalism is troubling. The series of amalagamations that took place in 2005 under Prime Minister Koizumi have already left many rural areas isolated and without access to basic necessities, namely medical care. Here in Otaki there is no longer a full-time physician.

Massive municipal entities will also be disatrous for Japan's already ailing forests and other natural areas. Even after the 2005 amalgamations many newly-formed cities are having difficulties managing the large areas of forestland they have acquired. Often, forest-management takes a backseat to the many problems and issues confronting the urban centers of these new cities. Forest management is often left to volunteers (see my previous posts: Forestry and fall leaves and Spirit and forests)

*McDonald, M. G. 1997. Agricultural Landholding in Japan: Fifty Years After Land Reform. Geoforum 28:55-78.

Sorting. . .

I apologize for the long absence; I've been graced by visits from guests lately, so have been spending time playing in the mountains and canyons.

I came across an article in the UK Guardian about a village, called Kamikatsu, in Shikoku that is striving to become a "zero-waste community" through a strict recycling program. The story intrigued me for two reasons. First, I wonder about the idea of "zero-waste". Second, I see similarities between Kamikatsu and Otaki in the resistance that some residents have to activities that draw on newer environmentalist themes.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/08/04/japan460.jpg

I wonder about the term: "Zero-waste". What does this mean exactly? I applaud the efforts of the residents of Kamikatsu, but it's important to note that recycling, not reduction (in either consumption or packaging), is the primary focus. In other words, reducing waste to zero will not be the final result; only the treatment of waste. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but the message is misleading and may be detrimental to efforts at reducing consumption, which is the most effective method for reaching a goal of "zero-waste". However, "zero-waste" itself may be a self-defeating concept, in as far as waste is an inseparable part of life, one that we may do well to accept and deal with, rather than seek to eliminate. For example, the article mentions that wooden chopsticks are recycled to pulp, that is in turn made into paper. This is okay, but wouldn't it be better to simply do away with wooden chopsticks altogether? Is it so hard to wash and re-use? It seems to me that instead of thinking ways to deal with waste in a quantitative manner (zero-waste), we would do well to think of waste qualitatively. Does this waste NEED to be produced? If so, can we do anything useful with the waste? It appears we should do away with the term "waste" itself, as it connotes something bad that must be gotten rid of. Not all "waste" is bad. . .starting here we might begin to think of new ways of using and reusing the things in our lives.

This article also caught my attention because of the reference made to resistance among older village residents to the new recycling program. Though I haven't found specific resistance to movements in Otaki that draw on broader environmentalist themes, I have noticed an alienation among older residents concerning such things. Because notions of "nature" have developed largely in urban areas, older residents of Otaki have little sense of the concept. For these residents the natural environment is very much a reality of their lives--at times mundane, wondrous, dangerous, etc.--rather than something romanticized and inherently good or whole. Therefore, a recycling program, for example, framed as a way to help the environment appears to have much less resonance among those who have grown up non-urban environments. It's easy to disregard the attitudes and postures of older residents, and often this is what occurs. However, this is an elitist and presumptuous position to take, and it ignores the vast body of experience and knowledge that local residents hold concerning their environment. At the same time, we cannot canonize all of the beliefs held by community members; besides, these beliefs are not homogeneous and so they cannot be represented as such.

There's a need for dialogue and democracy when it comes to matters concerning the local environment. In Otaki this situation does not exist; the national forestry office makes most management decisions, and local residents largely allow this by accepting that they have no voice in such matters. Larger environmentalist themes, dressed in their guise of unquestionable science, are used to legitimize the authority of the national forestry office. In this situation power operates in the realm of words, which are then translated into policy and eventually on the ground realities. It's important, therefore, that local residents educate themselves in the language of contemporary environmentalism, so that their voices can be heard as well.

Anyway, kudos to Kamikatsu for their efforts at recycling. I hope more communities in Japan will follow suit. However, space needs to be opened for the varied views and opinions of local residents to be heard.

they're G. . .rrrrrr. . . .8

Been up in the hills, and down in the canyons a lot this week, so I haven't had much time to write.

I did have a chance to read a couple of brief articles outlining the utter uselessness of this week's G8 Summit in Hokkaido, and the inactivity of the likes of these two.


Also had a chance to read through the Indigenous People's Declaration on the G8 Summit that was the product of a gathering, also in Hokkaido, of indigenous groups from around the world.

I'll write about the mountains and canyons soon. . .but tomorrow, back to the hills!

DOWN WITH EMPIRE AND UP WITH SPRING!

G8 goes green in Hokkaido, while the rest of us go, "what the ?"

In a story entitled "Cars and toilets go green at eco-friendly G8 summit" Reuters reported on some of the steps being taken by the Japanese government to insure the G8 summit currently being held on the northern island of Hokkaido is environmentally friendly. My favorite quote from the article was this one about how security forces at the summit are using "eco-friendly" Segway scooters:

"Usually, we have to walk, so we get tired, but we don't get tired with this," said Kubo, an employee of Rising Sun Security Service.

Though I do have to give credit to the reporters for pointing out the obvious: "how a scooter could be better for the environment than two feet was not so clear."

Here in Otaki I've been watching thunderclouds coming from the Sea of Japan billowing up into the hazy summer sky as they smack into the Kiso Mountains. I've been listening with delight to the dry cracks of thunder as they roll up and down the canyons. We will probably have heavy rains again this evening, and perhaps tomorrow as well. The water is needed, but as I look up at mountaintops bare of trees I worry about too much of a deluge coming at once, which has been common this year. Other parts of Japan have flooded, just like the Midwest of the U.S.

Global warming? Probably. But, just slapping on the label is too simplistic--the complexity of natural processes almost certainly means that we will have little understanding of the results of global warming until we are well into them. Good thing we have eco-friendly G8 summits.

Back to the summit. What I'm trying to get at is that "eco", "carbon offset", "going green", or whatever other label the G8 or any other group is going to apply needs to be considered with much suspicion. It seems to me that if the Japanese government wants to showcase it's "eco-friendliness" they could start with paying some attention to the thousands of hectares of forestland in places like Otaki that have been left in ecological disarray after being heavily overcut in the first half of the 20th century.

Or perhaps instead of spending money installing "green" toilets the Japanese government could offer some seed money to one of the hundreds of villages across Japan that is struggling, like Otaki, to develop some sort of economic activity that can give them a future. Ah, but villages like Otaki don't really fit the whole "eco" image--they don't have spare carbon to "offset", they simply get in the way of projects--planting forests and such--that allow G8 summit-ers and the like to offset their carbon.

So, perhaps that's the sort of eco-friendly world we're heading towards: the elite gather in luxuriant hotels, use green toilets, drive green cars, and allow their tired security guards to ride Segways, while the rest of us struggle to deal with the mess that was made before the G8 became so damn green.

Responding to Climate Change

An article in the Mainichi Shinbun (毎日新聞) outlines a report released by the Japanese Government's Ministry of the Environment. Among other measures the report suggests building a dam on the Tone River to ensure water for rice agriculture and the forcible relocation of residents in coastal areas that are in danger of flooding.

To read the full article click here.

In terms of "resiliency", these kind of large-scale, intensive responses raise some alarm because of the unintended consequences they might have. Dams, for example, have extremely short lives and can cause havoc without appropriate institutional support to maintain them.

I think government officials, including those in Japan, need to think more carefully in order to develop constructive responses to environmental changes of all varieties. Hasty responses done at large scales often have unintended consequences, which, by the time they come to light, are difficult to maneuver around because the social-environmental system is locked into a certain mode of operation. I argue that slow, diverse, and flexible responses are often much more effective in dealing with changing environmental conditions.

Otaki, in both good ways and bad ways, is a reflection of differing responses to not all environmental--but also economic, social, and political--changes. Local responses based on a depth of environmental knowledge and rooted in local social and cultural institutions have been much more effective and beneficial to the long-term health of Otaki's social and natural environments, than those made at higher levels, which often fail to account for local environmental, social, and cultural impacts.

There are lessons to be learned here, and yet the Ministry of the Environment presents only bigger and more intensive responses. God save those living on the shorelines. . .or under the god-damned dam!