It has to be said that first impressions of Japan's natural environment tend not to be very positive. In the postwar era there has been a massive shift towards an urbanized society, a society where successful people move to the city not away from it and where, for the younger generation in particular, contact with nature can be limited to walks in the park with the dog. Cities sprawl in all directions, a confusing mess of power cables and pulsing neon, with little evidence of planning controls. When you do reach the countryside, electricity pylons march across every view, cliffs are shored up with concrete and the coastline consists of nothing but sea walls and offshore breakwaters.
This can partly be explained by the desire to control, or attempt to control, the violent natural forces at play - devastating earthquakes, tidal waves, monsoons, volcanoes - and partly the economic and political might of the construction industry. In the words of one of Japan's leading activists, Yamashita Hirofumi, "Japan's postwar development has had a disastrous impact on the natural environment". Whatever the reason, it comes as something of a shock. After all, this is the nation justly famous for its cherry blossom and fiery autumn colours, which announces the changing seasons on the national news and which prides itself on its heightened aesthetic awareness.
However, nature does still play a pivotal role in Japanese life, as well as its literature, art and religion. Spectacular areas of unspoilt natural beauty are still to be found and there's a growing awareness of the need to safeguard them. The best require a little effort to reach, but even the largest cities contain important havens in their parks and shrine gardens.
Catherine Whyte
(With thanks to Maggie Suzuki and Richard Wilcox)
Additional material by Jan Dodd
Fauna and flora
Japan has an extremely complex zoogeographical history due to the continuous rise and fall of the sea level that repeatedly connected and severed the islands from the Chinese mainland. Generally speaking, the fauna and flora of the Japanese archipelago...
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Fish
Japan's seas and rivers contain around 3000 species of
fish
. The waters around the Ryukyu Islands are home to subtropical anemone fish, parrot fish, wrass and spiny lobster as well as numerous species of shark, turtle and whale. The ocean...
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Tokyo's crows
The incessant cawing of big, black
jungle crows
is one of the most familiar sounds of many Japanese cities, but particularly in Tokyo where, according to one recent survey, the population has exploded from 7000 birds in 1985 to 21,000 in 2000....
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Forests
Forests
of beech, silver fir, broad-leaf evergreens and mangroves once carpeted Japan. However, the postwar economic boom and in particular the massive increase in construction led to the decimation of many of these natural forests. They were...
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Conservation efforts
The explosion of recreational activities such as mountaineering in the early twentieth century provided the spur to the creation of Japan's first
national parks
in 1931
. Indeed, the Physical Fitness Bureau controlled the twelve...
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Environmental concerns
With very few
natural resources
of its own, Japan imports vast quantities of coal, tropical timber, plutonium, oil and natural gas; its per capita resource consumption ranks as one of the highest in the world. While the government, financial...
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Hope for the future
While
environmental awareness
is slowly growing among the general public in Japan, it is still painfully limited. Anyone will tell you their concerns about global warming or dioxin levels, but when it comes down to making certain changes in...
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