Infrastructure Asset Management
Agricultural Irrigation Facility
Asset Management
A unique water management system developed by our ancestors over 2,000 years.
The network of waterways, stretching some 400,000 km (ten times around the earth) across this narrow plain, has created a prosperous society in Japan, not only for paddy fields but also for maintaining a rich ecosystem, preventing floods, and providing water that supports people's lives throughout the seasons.
Many foreigners visiting Japan at the end of the Edo period were amazed by this highly technical water use system and praised the elaborate paddy-field society shaped by the waterways. Even in the modern age of towering buildings and bullet trains, these waterways have continued to be protected by farmers, with little change to their original flow paths.
Now, the 21st century has arrived. The global food issues are becoming more pressing, and a society based on mass production and mass consumption of the past must be replaced by a recycling-oriented society. Japan's paddy fields created by this network of waterways, are now attracting attention domestically and abroad as the basis for a stable food supply and as a system that promotes the cycle of nature.
Water has always been the source of all societies, all lifestyles, and all industrial activities. It is no exaggeration to say that the agricultural water facilities that have supported this cycle are distinctively Japanese assets.
We hope to pass these valuable assets
on to future generations.
※The upper page image photograph: "Tsujunkyo Bridge" Kumamoto Photo by (C) Tomo.Yun (http://www.yunphoto.net)