Men Rafting Down the Tenryu River: Memories of Rafting in the Early Showa Period (1930s)

Men Rafting Down the Tenryu River: Memories of Rafting in the Early Showa Period (1930s)
In the early Showa period, the Tenryu River, which flows from Yamamuro, Sakuma-cho, Nagano Prefecture, to Hamamatsu, was known as a "raging river. Raftsmen used to transport lumber cut upstream on rafts down the raging river. The "Yamamuro Falls" were the most difficult of all, and it was said that "only a skilled raftsman could cross the falls. The rafters steered the raft as if they were talking to nature, and were respected as craftsmen who could read the flow of the river. Their work was not mere transportation, but the pride of the mountain village and their very livelihood. The sight of the rafts, calling out to each other in the morning mist and flowing with the timber symbolized the symbiosis of nature and people. Before motorways were built, rafting was the key to logistics, but it disappeared with the construction of dams and expansion of roads after World War II. Even so, the stories of the rafters still remain in the villages along the Tenryu River, where the old-
timers tell that "those who knew that river could hear the voices of the mountains and the water. The story of the raftsmen conveys the memory of the Japanese climate and labor that lived between the threats and blessings of nature.