Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [21]
So Japan has staked its position at the far end of the pave-and-build spectrum. Redressing old mistakes is not on the agenda; the momentum within Japan is for increasing, rather than decreasing, humanity's impact on its mountains and seas. Even as Japan fell deeper and deeper into recession during the 1990s, it continued to provide more funding for civil-engineering works than ever before. In 1994, concrete production in Japan totaled 91.6 million tons, compared with 77.9 million tons in the United States. This means that Japan lays about thirty times as much per square foot as the United States.
In fiscal 1998, spending on public works came to ¥16.6 trillion (about $136 billion at 1999 exchange rates), the kind of money that dwarfs the cost of building the Panama Canal and far surpasses the budget of the U.S. space program. It meant an almost incalculable quantity of concrete and metal structures overlaying rivers, mountains, wetlands, and shoreline, in just one year-and a "poor" year at that, since Japan was mired in a recession. One can only imagine what heights the expenditures may rise to when the economy begins to grow again.
Meanwhile, through its Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), Japan is exporting the building of dams and river works to Asian countries such as Indonesia and Laos, where cash-starved governments welcome ODA largesse regardless of need. Through ODA-funded projects, Japanese construction firms profit during a time of economic downturn at home while establishing themselves abroad at ODA expense. Igarashi Takayoshi, a professor of politics at Hosei University and the author of a book on Japan's construction policies, commented, «They are exporting the exact same problems Japan has at home to the rest of the world.»
At international forums, Japanese participants are usually to be found speaking warmly in favor of environmental protection. And while these individuals are often sincere – even tragically sincere – their speeches and papers should not blind us to the path that Japan as a nation is following. Projects such as the destruction of wetlands at Isahaya, the damming of river systems at Nagara, the blasting of forest roads, and the armoring of the seashore are not marginal ones. They lie at the core of modern Japanese culture. Bureaucrats educated in the best universities plan them, consulting with the most respected professors; the finest engineers and landscape artists design them; top architects draft far-reaching civil-engineering schemes for the future; companies in the forefront of industry build them; leading politicians profit from them; opinion journals run ads in their pages in support of them; and civic leaders across the nation beg for more. Building these works and monuments consumes the mental energies of Japan's elite.
This means that Japan's money, technology, political clout, as well as the creative powers of its designers, academics, and civic planners, will be exerted in favor of pave-and-build-on a massive scale – during the next few decades. Scholars and institutions seeking to predict the way the world is going have overlooked one simple truth: the world's second-largest economy – Asia's most advanced state – is set firmly on this path.
One can already see the effect on Japan's intellectual life. While expertise in the technologies of protection of wetlands, forests, and seacoasts languishes at a primitive level, land sculpting heavily influences the direction of study both in the humanities and in engineering. The design of land-stabilizing material has become a specialty of its own. Gone are the days when the Construction Ministry simply poured wet concrete over hillsides. Today's earthworks use concrete in myriad