The Day the Mountain Cried: The Atami Mudslide Disaster and the Ethics of Land Reconsidered, July 2021

The Day the Mountain Cried: The Atami Mudslide Disaster and the Ethics of Land Reconsidered, July 2021

The July 2021 mudslide disaster in Izuyama, Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, was not a natural phenomenon but a social disaster resulting from the history of human development. About 13,000 cubic meters of fill collapsed, killing 27 people. The cause of the disaster was excessive land development on steep terrain and neglected fill, which was caused by postwar villa development and land investment during the bubble economy. After the collapse of the bubble economy, land ownership shifted, creating blank areas that could not be managed by the government. These structural deficiencies led to a catastrophe decades later: the Fill Land Regulation Law of 2023 was merely a post-disaster symptomatic remedy, demonstrating the lack of an integrated policy for land use and environmental preservation. Furthermore, the development of mega solar power plants that cut down mountain forests in the name of promoting renewable energy also highlighted the contradiction of destruction for the sake o
f the environment. The Atami disaster provided an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between the economy and nature, and to reconsider the ethics of land that restores the symbiosis between people and nature.