The Day the Mountain Cried: The Atami Mudslide Disaster and the "Land Ethic" Revisited July 2021

The Day the Mountain Cried: The Atami Mudslide Disaster and the "Land Ethic" Revisited July 2021
The July 2021 mudslide disaster in Mt. Izu, Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, was not a mere natural phenomenon, but a "social disaster" resulting from a history of human land use and development. About 13,000 cubic meters of fill collapsed, engulfing residential areas and claiming 27 lives. One of the factors that contributed to the damage was the excessive development of mountain forests and inappropriate fill. The steep terrain and fragile geology of the area were originally destroyed by postwar villa development and investment in tourism during the bubble period.

The economic growth of the 1980s created a trend to capitalize on the mountains and treat nature as an "investment. After the collapse of the bubble economy, the land was left in shifting ownership and turned into a "no-man's land" where the government could not intervene. The "negative legacy of development" led to the tragedy of 30 years later: the Fill Regulation Law, which came into effect in 2023, finally made it possible to deal with hazardous areas, but it was only a follow-up to the disaster. At the root lies the flawed policy of separating land use from environmental preservation.

On the other hand, the disaster also brought to light the contradictions of the new era of renewable energy promotion. The construction of mega solar power plants and forest development through the logging of mountains and forests is proceeding nationwide, creating the ironic reality that "development for the sake of the environment" is once again destroying nature. The tragedy in Atami was a turning point in the reexamination of the boundary between the economy and nature. The "ethics of the land" can be revived only when people see nature not as an object to be controlled, but as an entity to be lived with. The "idea beyond ownership" bequeathed by the National Trust movement is a guidepost for environmental policy in modern society, and on that day when the mountains of Atami wept, its voice certainly reached us.