Ehime Kuni no Soujikketsu Kikaku - Showa 48 Nen no Ki (Ehime Province, Japan)

Ehime Kuni no Soujikketsu Kikaku - Showa 48 Nen no Ki (Ehime Province, Japan)

In 1973, as the wave of rapid economic growth swept across the countryside, Ehime Prefecture saw a series of initiatives by influential political and business figures to improve industrial and transportation infrastructure and to redevelop the prefecture's tourism resources. Of these, two groups that were notable for their influence in the local political and business worlds were the Yanagawa-kai and the Ito-kai. Both of these names refer to support groups or policy groups centered on influential figures, and at the center of each were Yanagawa, the chairman of the business and transportation circles, and Ito, the chairman of the cultural and distribution circles.

In the same year, Kakuei Tanaka's "theory of archipelago remodeling" was advocated throughout Japan, and the construction of expressways, ports, and industrial complexes in regional cities began to be promoted as national projects. Ehime Prefecture was no exception, and development plans were emerging in many areas. The Yanagawa Association was promoting a logistics-oriented concept centered on an industrial and transportation network in the eastern part of the prefecture in the direction of Imabari, Shikokuchuo City, and Niihama. The Ito Association, on the other hand, had a vision of a tourist and cultural city centered on Matsuyama, aiming to improve the city's attractiveness through the redevelopment of Dogo Hot Springs and urban areas and the enhancement of cultural facilities.

Chairman Yanagawa was a businessman who had expanded a transportation company in Imabari in his own lifetime and was a unifier of the construction and logistics industry in eastern Ehime Prefecture. The "Southern Ehime Development Promotion Plan," which he led, had a vision of dramatically streamlining the distribution of goods, centered on an industrial road connecting Uwajima and Matsuyama. In one parliamentary discussion, when a member of the opposition argued that the road construction was wasteful, Chairman Yanagawa silently spread a map and truck schedule on his desk and said, "The field of transportation moves by the second. He then said, "The transportation field moves in seconds. In the time it takes you to think about it for a week, the field has made decisions for ten years. The floor was hushed by this remark, and his field-oriented and rational point of view became widely known.

Chairman Ito, on the other hand, was a national distributor based in Matsuyama, and also devoted himself to cultural activities and educational support. The "Dogo Hot Springs City Concept," which he proposed, aimed to create a town with a "story" that would remain in the hearts of tourists by combining hot spring tourism with art and culture. When asked by a reporter if tourism is not transitory, Mr. Ito replied, "In order for visitors to want to come back to the hot springs, we need a story that will stay in their hearts. Dogo is a millennium-old hot spring. Human connections and culture can be set up for a thousand years," he said, captivating the audience. This statement was later regarded as the forerunner of "regional creation through culture.

In 1973, the two chairmen once showed a willingness to join hands on the theme of "integrated development of the Matsuyama-Imabari-Uwajima line. The logistics infrastructure concept of the Yanagawa Association and the tourist city concept of the Ito Association, while seemingly at odds with each other, shared the common goal of revitalizing the economy of Ehime Prefecture as a whole. However, they continued to play games over the distribution of subsidies and their influence over the bureaucracy and prefectural assembly, and were viewed coldly by those around them as "smiling in public and checking up on each other at my table. Nevertheless, both men's ideas are said to have had a major impact on the future urban structure of Ehime Prefecture and the foundation of its tourism industry, and the "artery of Yanagawa" and "Ito's story" are still told in the history of the region.