Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
for the bright lights of their fireflies. The firefly's historical associations are
reinforced in the names given to two of the most common species found in Japan,
the Genji and Heike firefly (
Genji-botaru [Luciola cruciata]
and
Heike-botaru
[Luciola lateralis]
), named after two feuding families whose battles were celebrated in
romances and whose rise to power signalled the decline of the court nobility.
Fireflies, however, have not been the only insects to be appreciated in this way. In
late summer and early autumn insect-listening parties
(mushi-kiki
kai)
were held in
the hills around Kyoto and Edo (pre-modern Tokyo), ostensibly to allow the town
folk to enjoy the chirruping of the cicadas. In the last decades of the nineteenth and
early part of the twentieth century, the capture of fireflies for urban households or
for rural tourist centres became more and more commercialised, giving rise to calls
for their protection (Laurent 1998). Until quite recently it was common for children
to climb trees in search of cicadas or crawl after stag beetles, netting the insects in
their hands and placing them in bamboo cages. A whole culture of affection and
enjoyment was built around insects.
The Yokohama project, therefore, is built on ancient literary associations but
trades on more recent memories. Its leaders are part of a wider movement that
manipulates the symbolic value of fireflies and dragonflies in order to advance an
agenda related principally to improving urban environments. At the same time,
however, they are conscious, as are some other campaigners, of the dangers that
excessive attention to fireflies and dragonflies can engender and of the need for a
sensitive approach to the creation of proper habitats. In particular, they argue—
against the grain of the urban environmental campaigns—that fireflies prefer water
which is not too clean (Mori 1988:84; Morishita Y ko 1995:147). In doing so, they
attempt to apply an ecological harness to a popularised, media-supported campaign
to use fireflies as symbols not only of a reflowering of nature but also of a rebirth of
community.
Biotopes in the Tokyo suburbs
Of the various schemes to inject a concern for local ecosystems into planning, few
are as radical as that implemented in Hino, a town in the far western suburbs of
Tokyo, on low-lying ground near the point where the Asagawa flows into the Tama
river. The area underwent a period of pell-mell urbanisation that started around
1955, when Hino's population stood at 27,305. By 1995, it had reached 166,429.
The predominant activity had changed from agriculture to manufacturing, notably
metals and the auto industry (Hino trucks). Hino's rice fields were being rapidly
eaten into, and (as has happened in so many other recently urbanised territories in
Japan) its extensive system of largely artificial waterways was no longer needed for
the purpose for which it had been constructed, irrigation. By 1995, some 180
kilometres of waterway remained. The failure of the sewerage system to keep pace
with new construction of housing meant that in Hino, as in Edogawa Ward in the
east of Tokyo, the waterways were becoming polluted, in particular by kitchen waste
water. This and related problems prompted the local government in Hino to
