User:NatalieMoun/meiji era

(editing the Meiji era wiki page)

Environmental Issues in the Meiji era
The Meiji era of Japan was a period of rapid industrialization and modernization, prioritizing economic development and increased utilization of natural resources. With the Charter Oath, the Meiji emperor ended Japan's practice of isolation and began to adopt and adapt western styles of commerce, science, and agriculture. It is during this period that Japanese environmentalism came to the forefront of politics due to the effects of pollution, specifically at the Ashio copper mines.

Extinction of the Hokkaido Wolf
In order to begin a commercial livestock industry on the island of Hokkaido, Edwin Dun was hired by the Hokkaidō Development Commission to address the problem of wolves killing livestock animals. Dun's solution was to poison the wolves with bait that had been poisoned with strychnine, which allowed for large numbers of wolves to be killed at once. Dun wrote of the success of the practice in Hokkaido saying: "So within one summer and autumn we were freed from a pest that in the spring seemed very threatening to our enterprise." The poisoning program combined with the local bounty system that incentivised killing wolves, the Hokkaido wolf (Canis lupus hattai) became extinct.

Copper Mining
The mining of copper did not begin during the Meiji period but with technological advancements, such as reverberated furnaces, the environmental impacts of the practice increased. The most notable example of the disastrous effects of mine pollution, is the Ashio copper mine which was located in the Kantō region of Japan. The mine's location near the Watarase River was important, connecting it's pollutants to communities and ecosystems down river. The smelting process of copper mining released sulfur dioxide. This pollutant, and its other form of sulfuric acid, was responsible for many adverse effects on the environment and human health. Pollution of sulfuric acid was related to a decline in birth rates, crop failures, contaminated waterways, and gave way to floods because of the lack of plant matter. Arsenic, also released from the smelting process, was another prominent pollutant. Arsenic exposure can damage the nervous system and liver as well as cause lung and skin cancer. In response to the pollution, local communities and leaders such as Shōzō Tanaka demanded better preventative measures to be put in place to combat pollution.

Environmental Activism
Matsumoto Eiko, a Japanese journalist, published a series of articles about mine pollution which were later combined and published as Sufferings of a Mine-Poisoned Land in 1902. Her work provided a critical analysis of how pollution affects every aspect of an individual's life, and argued that the Meiji government's attempts to solve the pollution problem related to mining had been unsuccessful.

Shōzō Tanaka spoke out against the Pollution Prevention Committee's plan to address flooding by demolishing the village of Yanaka to make a reservoir. Tanaka also argued on behalf of victims of pollution to the Diet, citing article 27 of the Meiji Constitution which protected individual property rights. The 1897 Third Mine Pollution Prevention Order, a result of Tanaka's activism as a member of the House of Representatives, required pollution prevention measures to be put in place at the Ashio copper mine. Tanaka also supported miners from the Ashio mine that went on strike due to the pollution of the region.