****bi Germany, they went back from the flood control with dams to the damage prevention without resisting floods. In Britain, rivers were privatized and in France their management was decentralized. In the US, the Corps of Engineers which had built dams for flood control realized the limits of flood control measures by modern river engineering. ..

AS a schoolgirl. I went Io an elementary school at the north end of the city of Kyoto. As there were no swimming pools, we swam In a river nearby. Its water was so cold that our lips became pale in ten minutes and we could see amago — beautiful trout-like fish — swim in the clear water. In the spring when I was nineteen ' years old. I saw amago again as an angler. Rivers were my colleges where I studied a lot of things.

From then, for sixteen years, until the spring in 1988 when I was thirty-four. I walked along rivers throughout Japan a hundred days a year. And I found that Japan was a "River Country” and that few real rivers were left in this river country. And I realized that they would absurdly build an estuary dam on the Nagara River, one of the "last rivers". July in the same year, as soon as the construction of the Nagara River Estuary Dam began, I organized an anti-dam movement with Takeshi Kaiko, a novelist. This was a movement not only opposing a single dam project and protecting a single beautiful river but also questioning why we no longer had such proud rivers in this river country. In 1995, the seventh Sear since the movement began, owever. the dam was completed and operated. In the next year. 1996, we visited the United States.

In the U.S., the Bureau of Reclamation had declared that the dam building era was over. They initiated not only cancelling of plans but also discontinuation of dam constructions and dam removal. After a visitation to some dams. I met an airplane crash, which fortunately I survived. I believe that the gods of rivers saved me. In autumns of 1996 and 1997. we had international conferences on the Nagara River, where we maintained that "changing the river management policy" and "review on the development in the 20th century manners" were

the trend among all the developed countries except Japan. March 1997. the Ministry of Construction drastically amended the River Act first time in a century. In addition to that 338 dam projects were reviewed and eighteen of them were cancelled or suspended. A monster finally went down.

This reportage was serialized in "Sekai" — one of the most prestigious monthly magazine in Japan — from April 1997 to March 1998. Around 1988. I also reported rivers on through the whole country spending nearly two years. Since this was a report first time in almost a decade. I was a little pessimistic about whether rivers would be still alive or not. I have mixed feelings about that we still have only three rivers which maintain their lives as rivers — the Shimanto, the Naka, the Nishibetsu. I am wondering whether we should be glad or sad about it. On the Yoshino and at Kito village on the Naka, there are people who fight to defend the last of the last rivers desperately. On the Chitose and Honmyo. NGO coalitions are fighting against false flood control logic which Ministries of Construction and Agriculture argue. They are exposing the government's "logic of construction for itself' by showing their movements driving it to the corner.

And look at those poor rivers, the Oi and Kurobe! They are no longer rivers. But they represent the status quo of most of the rivers in Japan. In the 1960s. when Japan enjoyed a high economic growth rate, rivers were polluted and river fisheries went out of business. The Ministry of Construction aimed at those fishermen and made up a system, in which if they agreed to a dam in their river basin, they would get a large amount of money as a compensation. This system has been a measure for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to collect political donations and

votes.

And this has made rivers throughout Japan half dead Just like the Oi and the Kurobe with citizens who should have saved rivers kept utterly ignored. But. now. people have awoke. "The Nagara river" woke them up. Finding that they had right to save rivers even if they did not live on them, a lot of groups and individuals who work hard to take back rivers in their and their children's hands have be-Sun to emerge. So I am confident rat the rivers will revive.

In Germany, they cause ex-Srimental floods and have res-:nts in the floodplains that was flooded move at the expense of the government. They went back from the flood control with dams to the damage prevention without resisting floods. In Britain, rivers were privatized and in France their management was decentralized. In the US, the Corps of Engineers which had built dams tor flood control realized the limits of flood control measures by modern river engineering and asked residents in floodplains not to place expensive property on the first floor, to have flood insurance and to move out of them if possible.

Every country reflects what it has done with the modern river engineering. Without resisting the gods of rivers, they are trying to regain the nature and sustainability of the ecosystem. There also are economical reasons. In every nation. both people and the business interests criticize the needless large-scale projects for causing economic stagnation. Above all. they no longer have enough money to do them. On the other hand, however, even in such a severe financial circumstance, they are wisely spending a lot of money to recover the nature. In the Netherlands. for example, they have begun to return reclaimed land to wetland at great expense.

How can we regain the nature in Japan, a developed country in name only?

The Ministry of Construction is now establishing a committee with the National Land Agency to review the result of its review on dams In the last year. In addition, it established boards "to follow up dams" at every dam throughout country in order to shut the Environment Agency out of the survey of rivers.

Under this situation, if the Environment Agency also carries out research on the rivers and dams, it will be double expenditure of taxpayers' money. And many sitting executive members of academic societies are involved in those boards. We learned in the U.S. that NGOs. researchers and politicians had fought cooperatively against the pork barrel system to take rivers back by having laws amended one by one. As soon as we tried to realize it in Japan, however, those academic members were won over to the Ministry's side.

Japan is refusing to realize the current of the world. Its completely cunning bureaucracy is planning, in the name of "administrative reform", to establish the "Ministry of Land and Transport ", gigantic development agency with 550 thousand officials and 10 trillion yen (approx. U.S.8 69 billion) annual budget.

April 6. 1998. "The 21st Century Environment Committee" was established on the initiative of leading researchers and journalists. I had the honor of being one of the initiators. I hope that various people will take serious action on all fronts, questioning "what the 21st century should we make?". This question will be the weapon for recovering the nature we have ruined in the 20th century, at least for a few years until the beginning of the 21 st century. I wish this would be an aid to understand the realities of rivers in Japan.

The writer is a Japanese environment activist