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Foundation Newsletter Tamagawa

No. 125 “Hamura Water Intake Sluice”

Reports from our Seasonal newsletters
Special Edition on the Annual Report about the Foundation’s Projects
No. 125 “Hamura Water Intake Sluice”
The Foundation Newsletter, Tamagawa (English Version)
Wildlife around the Tama River

Hamura Water Intake Sluice

 

The sluice that takes in water for the Tamagawa Josui aqueduct, the number 8 view among the 50 best views of the Tama River, has been an important facility for supplying water to the residents of Tokyo since the Edo Period (1603 – 1868) right up to the present day.
This sluice was built in order to dam the waters of the Tama River and bring source water for the water supply into the Tamagawa Josui aqueduct. It consists of a dam with unusual structures called a fixed sluice gate and a nagewatashi sluice. A nagewatashi sluice consists of iron girders placed across the river, with pine logs, bundles of twigs and gravel attached to them. The water taken in from the Hamura Water Intake Sluice flows along the 43km-long Tamagawa Josui aqueduct to Shinjuku Yotsuya Okido.
Near the Hamura Bridge, 2,000 somei yoshino (prunus yedoensis) cherry trees were planted because it was said that the leaves of cherry trees purify drinking water. It is now a famous cherry blossom viewing spot. As well as hosting throngs of people seeking views of the cherry blossoms in spring, it is also a popular spot for taking a walk, and is home to cultural assets that have been designated as such by the metropolitan and municipal governments.
Photo & Text Hidehiko Endo

 

Opening Article
From the Environment to Sustainability


Motoyuki Suzuki

Winner of the 1st Tokyu Foundation for Better Environment Social Contribution in Academia Award
Special Academic Advisor, United Nations University
Professor, The Open University of Japan
Chairman, Central Environment Council, Ministry of the Environment

 

 

With the COP15 conference in Copenhagen providing one opportunity, the number of people who are concerned about global warming and about the framework that will help the Earth survive is now growing. In fact, it is said that human activities on Earth have already greatly surpassed the carrying capacities of the Earth’s various systems, and that this will bring about a great catastrophe in the future. It seems that we have at last become aware that, in order to prevent this situation, we should pursue human activities that are sustainable into the future.

 

Even if we talked about the sustainability of the Earth as a whole, we had in the past merely understood the term in conceptual terms, and the idea had been lacking in specifics to a significant degree. However, over the last 20 years since the beginning of the Heisei era in Japan, the world has changed considerably; and we have at last realized from these changes that we cannot continue with the same kind of human activities.

 

Three things can be said to symbolize this change. Firstly, there was the end of the east-west bipolar system, symbolized by the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and after which we entered an era of unipolar values led by the market economy. Secondly, there was the revolutionary development of information technology. Beginning in the 1990s, the operating speed of computers increased tenfold every three years, which means that over the course of 20 years it has increased more than a millionfold. Moreover, in 1991, the worldwide web (WWW) was launched and the internet became prevalent. We have become able to obtain information from the other side of the globe in the blink of an eye. The information distance of the world has dramatically decreased. Thirdly, there is the awareness of problems relating to the global environment. After James Hansen of NASA testified to the “progress of global warming” in 1988 at a US senate hearing, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was established the same year, and people’s interest in the issue grew worldwide. Through projections of global warming using supercomputers, we began to understand the structure of global climate systems to some extent. What these three symbolic events have taught us is that the world has become smaller. There are hardly any mysterious places left on the Earth, and we have come to understand a wide range things. What we have realized at this late stage is the “finiteness” of the Earth. Not only underground resources and energy resources, but also even the services provided by ecosystems above ground are finite; while the number of humans continues to grow rapidly. The world population, which was 2.6 billion in 1950, exceeded 6 billion in 2000, and is expected to reach 9.2 billion in 2050. It is clear that the world will experience a catasrophe if we continue as we have been doing without any consideration.

 

In order to prevent this, we need to create a vision of how we are to carry out immense human activity amidst the limited capacity of the earth, and the only way to do this is through an “image of a sustainable society”. Japan’s Strategy for an Environmental Nation in the 21st Century (approved by Cabinet in 2007) sets forth a low-carbon society, a society with an environmentally-sound material cycle, and a society based on coexistence with nature, as the three aspects of a sustainable society. Of these, the question of how to translate a society based on coexistence with nature into reality is one with a diverse range of potential solutions here in Japan, where 67% of the rather cramped land area is occupied by forests and where people are facing the issue of a large aging population. This will be a good opportunity for mankind to rethink our fundamental “way of life amidst nature”, while making use of regional characteristics, customs rooted in culture and tradition, and the wisdom of the local populace.
The Tama River, which runs through a densely populated area, has a wide-ranging significance as an entity close to people’s lives, and the people who live near the Tama River, including myself, should put every effort to establish a consensus to increase its potential value.

 

Special Article

Painting the Tama River


Akemi Nojiri

Advisor, Token GeotecAdvisor, Beautiful Tama River Forum

 

 

Over the course of the eight years that have passed since I first picked up a water brush, three years after my retirement, I have created 4,700 wash sketches. Naturally, I paint more than one each day. Given that I had completed 3,500 as of last year, which marked the seventh year of my hobby, I have painted 1,200 sketches this year, which works out at a pace of three per day.
The reason for this is that at New Year two years ago, I met the Secretary-Generali of the Beautiful Tama River Forum and was asked to start the project, 88 Temples in the Tama River Area with Beautiful Views of Cherry Blossomsii, and that I have also been working on sketches of 100 Views of the Beauty of the Tama River in Four Seasons.

 

I am astounded that I have painted 1,700 sketches of the Tama River over two years, while still being active as an advisor! It might be labeled mass production of inferior items, but the fact that my amateur efforts have been used has brought me unhoped-for joy.

 

I am grateful to the wash sketches, which I have enjoyed after my retirement, and am also grateful to the once-in-a-lifetime encounter with the Beautiful Tama River Forum, which has been kind enough to use my sketches. Moreover, I cannot forget my gratitude to everyone who has utilized my sketches, whether exhibiting them or turning them into picture postcards. These include Saitama TV, which introduced me as a “hobby artist”, and Japan Publications, Inc., which published my sketches as Watercolor Sketches and 10 Ways of Utilizing Them, not to mention Takaotozan Railway Co., Ltd., whose railway runs along the Tama River, Takahata Fudoson Temple, Kosugenoyu Hot Spring, Okutama Tourism Association, Showa Kinen Park, Tamagawa Ecomuseum, and many, many others.

 

As I’ve written in detail in my book Watercolor Sketches and 10 Ways of Utilizing Them, the key in continuing to do watercolor sketches as a hobby for a long time is how you utilize them. To put it another way, if you do not paint sketches that you can utilize for something, you will become discouraged before long.

 

In my own case, I have my own way of doing things and have not been taught by anybody. Almost all my sketches are on F3 drawing paper. This is just the same width as A4 paper, and is easy to scan and upload to a computer. Furthermore, when I print out the scanned image, the finish is more beautiful than the original sketch. I then make a present of the printed version of the sketch to the owner of that particular view, as a mark of my gratitude. I put the original sketch in a clear file on my bookshelf. 4,500 pictures take up the whole of a large bookshelf.

 

The problem is the frame. For last year’s exhibition of the original sketches for 88 Temples in the Tama River Area with Beautiful Views of Cherry Blossoms at the Ome Municipal Museum of Art, I prepared 90 frames that I had made myself. My frames are just handmade from twigs about the size of my thumb, attached around the edge of a plywood board, with acrylic glass attached using nails. Having said that, the twigs come from trees with beautiful bark, such as cherry, ume (Japanese apricot) and Japanese white birch, and if they are not fairly straight, they cannot be used.

One cannot just buy twigs. I gather twigs from the ume tree in my garden at home, or cherry tree twigs that have been blown in from the hill behind my home, as a parting gift from a typhoon, or am given Japanese white birch twigs that people have been kind enough to gather when they visit our company’s recreation facility in Tateshina; thus, ceaseless efforts are required.
This year, around the time when this newsletter Tamagawa reaches you, the exhibition 100 Views of the Beauty of the Tama River in Four Seasons should be taking place at the Ome Municipal Museum of Artiii. I would be most happy if you went there to enjoy not only my sketches, but also the labors of love, my “twig frames”.
(The sketch on this page is a panorama showing the Unose Bridge over Mitake-keikoku Ravine)

 

i Fujio Miyasaka, Foundation Newsletter Tamagawa Issue 122, p.5

 

 

ii http://www.sakurakaido.jp/map_sketch.html

 

 

iii 9 -14 March 2010

 

 

 

 

 

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