Memories of Water Echoing in a Garden of Waste Coal - Kawachinagano City, Osaka Prefecture and Togura Town, Nagano Prefecture, September 1995

Memories of Water Echoing in a Garden of Waste Coal - Kawachinagano City, Osaka Prefecture and Togura Town, Nagano Prefecture, September 1995
In 1995, Japan was in the midst of a prolonged recession following the bursting of the bubble economy, but as environmental awareness grew, community-driven water quality improvement methods were beginning to be tested. The influx of domestic wastewater and pesticides due to urbanization was slowly damaging riparian ecosystems, and both local governments and the private sector were searching for ways to "coexist with nature.

The Amano Country Club in Kawachinagano City, Osaka Prefecture, set up a small charcoal-making hut on its premises and carbonized dead trees and pruned branches to make homemade charcoal. The charcoal is submerged in the bottom of ponds and waterways to absorb and purify toxic substances in the water. Pesticide residues are greatly reduced, and the wood vinegar solution, a byproduct of charcoal making, is used to control pests. The charcoal ash is powdered and spread on turf and soil to improve the soil. This recycling and utilization method attracted attention as a new attempt to ease the environmental burden of golf courses.

Meanwhile, the town of Togura in Nagano Prefecture introduced charcoal into agricultural canals and irrigation ponds to alleviate pollution caused by miscellaneous domestic wastewater and inflows of agricultural chemicals. As a result of this improvement in water quality, genji fireflies (river fireflies), which had long disappeared, have been confirmed again. Fireflies are a symbol of good water quality, and this revival has left a strong impression on local residents. The charcoal was designed as a highly recyclable technology that brings out the value of the resource to the very end, as it can be reused and spread as a soil conditioner after degradation.

At the time, the Forestry Agency and environmental administration were increasingly interested in "new wood use development" to utilize thinned and unused timber, and methods to link local resources to environmental conservation were being explored in various regions. In this trend, the Kawachinagano and Togura cases can be regarded as pioneering environmental restoration models, both technologically and institutionally. The attempts to combine a series of technologies (charcoal adsorption and purification, wood vinegar utilization, and firefly indicator) with ecological observation offered a piece of the answer to the excessive waste and deteriorating water quality that Japan was facing in the mid-1990s.

This story is the very challenge of a community reeling in nature and turning "waste wood" into "guardian of water," a memory of regeneration that leaves us with the poetic sentiment that "nature will respond.