Ashio Copper Mine Research Articles

Heavy metals in Lake Yanaka, Japan, an artificial retarding basin established for remediation of heavy metals contamination in the Watarase River

BackgroundThe Watarase Retarding Basin (WRB) involving Lake Yanaka was established for the sedimentation of the heavy metals contaminating the Watarase River in 1989. The Ashio Copper Mine poisoning (ACMP) incident that occurred from the late 19th century to the 1970s caused serious heavy metal contaminations along the Watarase River. Since stopping the mining activity in 1973, the heavy metal concentration in the water of the Watarase River significantly decreased. MethodsTo see the status of the heavy metal contaminations in Lake Yanaka, water, sediments, and Japanese river snails (marutanishi) were analyzed by using ICP-MS. ResultsThe concentration of As, Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn in the waters exhibited a good correlation (r>0.96) with the concentration of those in the sediments. The concentration of As, Cd, and Pb in the water was under the Standards for Protecting Human Health in Japan (<10 µg/L, respectively). Whereas heavy metal concentrations in sediments of Lake Yanaka were not decreased and remained in the same range as those of the Watarase River reported in 1984. The concentrations of As and Zn in the sediments of Lake Yanaka were beyond the regulation standards (<15 mg/kg for As and <120 mg/kg for Zn). Heavy metals were highly concentrated in the shells, intestinal organs, and muscles of marutanishi snails. The bioconcentration of the heavy metals comparatively reflected the concentration in the sediments rather than those in the waters. In particular, the concentration of the heavy metals in the shells exhibited a good correlation (r>0.98) with those in the sediments. Heavy metals were more concentrated in the internal organs than shells and muscles. ConclusionSince the institution of Lake Yanaka in 1989, the water and sediments of Lake Yanaka were newly brought from the Watarase River. Although heavy metal concentrations in the sediment did not change, those in the water decreased. The function for precipitating heavy metals of WRB seems to work and Lake Yanaka works as a reservoir of over-flowed water and sediment, which include heavy metals, of WRB. This study reminded us it would take a long term to remediate the environment from heavy metal pollution.

Researchon Resource Reuse in the Industrial Site Regeneration - Taking the CulturalCreative Industry Park of "Hangyang Zhao" as the Example

During the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution achievedaccumulation of capital through continuous technological improvements. The urbanindustrialization was thereby booming but finally came to an end, leaving a greatamount of industrial heritage in cities. With the improved quality of life, themasses have paid increasing attention to the ecological environment, so theregenerated industrial heritage has come under the spotlight. Following the growingeconomic development around the world, the resource recycling of industrial heritagehas become a global hot topic. This paper expounds the formation and regeneratingmeans of industrial heritage, and analyzes the development history and regeneratingforms of the three mature industrial heritage parks, including the Pocheon Art Valley,Beijing 798 ArtDist and the Ashio Copper Mine.<BR> Due to the complicated spatial and time spans of industrial heritageregeneration, this paper takes the Hanyang Zao Advertising Creative IndustryPark in Wuhan, China as an example. It analyzes the status quo of “Hanyang Zao”through data investigation and file query and conducts an interactivecomparison with the North Duisburg Landscape Park, a successful transformationof industrial heritage by Peter Latz. Through studying the German version designmethods of resource recycling, this paper puts forward a feasible design planon the resource recycling of the Hanyang Zao Advertising Creative Industry Park,hoping to provide it as an easy reference for industrial heritage regenerationin many cities of China.

A Century-Long Ex-Post Evaluation of a Countermeasure for a Serious Pollution Problem in Japan

Current environmental literature provides insufficient information and analysis on how today’s environmental state was shaped by countermeasures to pollution taken in the last century, which could be characterized as a century of environmental degradation. Such a look back is crucial to better understand and predict how policy and countermeasure choices today may shape the world in the future. Following this line of reasoning, the present work conducted a post audit on the long-term consequence of a countermeasure against a major heavy metal pollution case caused by the operation of the Ashio Copper Mine in Japan. It examined this issue from both environmental and societal perspectives by document analysis, field investigation on the heavy metal concentration in the soils of a heavy mental catchment area and questionnaire survey on the public knowledge with regard to the copper mining contamination case as well. It shed new light on how environment may evolve via the interaction with human activities by identifying drivers behind major changes. It also revealed a gap between the reality and the public perception towards the consequence of the copper contamination. Such insights will deepen the discussion on what is sustainability and motivate further study to pursue sustainable development.

Spatiotemporal changes in water quality along a historically metal-contaminated river: a retrospective analysis of 50 years of monthly monitoring data

The Watarase River, running through Japan’s northern Kanto region, has a long history of trace-metal contamination originating from the Ashio Copper Mine. Given the historical importance of incidents at this mine, understanding spatiotemporal environmental changes in the river, including changes in water quality, is important. By using long-term water-quality monitoring data (1960–2010), we aimed to reconstruct the spatiotemporal changes in six water-quality variables—the concentrations of three metals (copper, zinc, arsenic), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and concentration of nitrate-nitrogen—along the Watarase River using generalized additive mixed models. The modeling results clearly demonstrate that during the 1960 and 1970s, metal pollution levels (as represented by copper and zinc) greatly decreased (from 450–2300 to 8–39 μg Cu L−1 and from 490–1500 to 17–52 μg Zn L−1), whereas organic pollution levels, as represented by the BOD and COD increased. Unique changes were observed in the cases of arsenic and nitrate-nitrogen (e.g., marked increases in the 1960s). From the 1980s until 2010, gradual decreases in the levels of metal and organic pollution were generally observed. Only in the 2000s were annual mean concentrations of copper in the lower reaches of the Watarase River lower than the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) water-quality criterion.

Bad Water: Nature, Pollution, and Politics in Japan, 1870–1950, by Robert Stolz

Bad Water: Nature, Pollution, and Politics in Japan, 1870-1950, by Robert Stolz. Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society. Durham, Duke University Press, 2014. xi, 288 pp. $24.95 US (paper). Robert Stolz argues that a sense of environmental crisis overturned an existing paradigm of scientific mastery of nature, beginning with the poisoning of Kanto waterways by industrial waste from the Ashio copper mine. He further contends that efforts to confront this sense of crisis began within Meiji liberalism as manifested in the career of politician cum environmental protester Tanaka Shozo (1841-1913), a liberal politician who, ultimately disillusioned with political action, turned to developing a new understanding of nature itself as powerful. Stolz argues that while Tanaka is often treated as an idealized, isolated figure, his awareness of environmental issues continued in the careers of anarchist Ishikawa Sanshiro (1876-1956) and Kurosawa Torizo (1885-1982), the founder of the early green corporation Snow Brand Dairy. Throughout, the author seeks to combine environmental history with political philosophies of the subject to explore the extremely rich and still urgent search for a form of political subjectivity and social organization adequate to the environmental crisis of capitalist modernity (p. 10). Drawing in part on perspectives of Actor-Network Theory (ant) and Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies, Stolz seeks to explore interactions among objects and the agency of the non-human (p. 11) but explicitly adopts a Marxist framework to add an historical dimension to these approaches. Stolz effectively strips away the idealized images of Tanaka that permeate many contemporary assessments of him as part of an effort to take early environmentalism beyond discussion of its role in Meiji liberalism. His analysis is well documented and convincing. An emphasis on participatory democracy (p. 36) in local elections conveys an impression of broad participation, yet suffrage in these realms, like later national parliamentary elections, had property qualifications that restricted suffrage in local governments (institutions that had limited financial resources other than those from the central government)--all of which suggests that Tanaka was even less representative of broad popular sentiment than Stolz indicates. All that said, the degree to which this perspective changes our broader understanding of modem Japanese history is not clear, for all the key people Stolz analyzes were clearly exceptional individuals, especially anarchist Ishikawa. Underlying Bad Water's historical trajectory is a clear demarcation between modem economic activities and those of pre-modern eras, which oversimplifies the divide. …

Bad Water: Nature, Pollution and Politics in Japan, 1870–1950. By Robert Stolz (Durham, Duke University Press, 2014) 269 pp. $89.95 cloth $24.95 paper

In this book, Stolz tells the story of three Japanese who in differing ways set out to challenge Japanese capitalism while seeking a new relationship with nature. In doing so, he relates their works and their thought to events and currents in Japan in the context of Marxist ideas about the subsumption of nature by capital. He provides many fresh insights, even when covering those parts of the story that are already familiar. His interpretations are cogent and clearly argued.Stolz starts with the basic premise that the liberal ideology of Meiji Japan was inherently problematical in its rupture of the human subject from nature, leading inevitably to the severe cases of environmental disaster that have occurred in Japan throughout its modern history. At several points, Stolz eschews the view of a naturalized past based on a radical ecology. The advent of the Meiji era, he writes, in no way represented a clean break with the past. Despite all attempts to arrest it, nature insisted on intruding into the falsely dichotomized human body, most notably in the form of cholera outbreaks and then of ever-more devastating floods. The flood of 1896, the worst at that point to hit the Kanto Plain on which Tokyo stands, was rendered all the more damaging by the cocktail of poisonous pollutants that it carried from the Ashio copper mine.This event, the first and the most egregious of the pollution scandals that have chequered Japan’s modern history, provides the framework for much of the discussion in the first half of this book. The reaction of the state, in a move that was repeated many times later, was to engineer a solution through a reinforcement of dykes and levees, but this strategy only made the flooding worse. Eventually, in an ironic twist, the authorities destroyed the homes of the villagers who were strengthening the levees against the flood waters because according to the recently enacted River Law, the state had the prerogative to do so. This telling episode forms one of the centerpieces of Stolz’s book. It marked the moment when Tanaka Shōzō, one of the book’s three main protagonists, converted from his faith in a governmental solution to a complete opposition to the liberal politics of Meiji Japan and an active support of the villagers whose homes were destroyed. He lived among these people until his death in 1913.The Ashio copper mine and Tanaka’s role have been treated before in the English-language literature, but this book is surely the first to interrogate this transformation in Tanaka’s thinking. From this time onward, Tanaka advocated a social ecology built around the concepts of flow (nagare) and poison (doku)—all-encompassing concepts for him. Any attempt to control the constantly flowing force of nature gave rise to “harmful backflows” (95). In Stolz’s words, “Human action contrary to nagare not only thwarted nagare but actively created doku” (97).The other figures about whom Stolz writes have figured less prominently in writings on radical Japanese thought. One of them, Ishikawa Sanshirō, was a sort of rural anarchist who was deeply influenced by the English activist Edward Carpenter and the French anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus. Ishikawa rejected a party-based socialism in favor of one based on the transmission of ideas outside formal organizational structures. He espoused a democracy that was close to the soil, believing that it could be reinforced through constant contact with nature, including nudism.Kurosawa Torizō, the third member of Stolz’s triumvirate, was the founder of one of Japan’s best-known dairies. Kurosawa’s social ecology was based on a “critique of capitalism and its relations with nature” (164), as well as a fundamental attachment to the symbolic and actual appeal of the “dairy farm,” on which cows’ manure fertilized the soil on which grew the grass that fed the cows. Kurosawa, however, never extended his criticisms of capitalism into a critique of imperialism; he and his company were co-opted into the war effort. Both during and after the war, his dairy developed incongruously into a major pillar of the Japanese food industry, eventually becoming embroiled in a series of scandals concerning tainted products, as if to support Tanaka’s thesis about the pervasiveness of poison under capitalism.Stolz’s book gains its special strength from its close intertwining of Marxist theory with the lives of the central protagonists, as shown in his conclusion about Kurosawa’s dairy: “In the process of tracing the continuities between the pre- and postwar incarnations of Snow Brand, our true enemy has now revealed itself: the real subsumption of nature under capital, or, in other words, the active manipulation of nature by humans to produce a nature most conducive to capital accumulation” (189). As this statement suggests, Bad Water successfully stitches together environmental history, a social ecology that predates that of Bookchin, and Marxist theory.1

Robert Stolz. Bad Water: Nature, Pollution, and Politics in Japan, 1870–1950.

Like Caesar's Gaul, Robert Stolz's Bad Water: Nature, Pollution, and Politics in Japan, 1870–1950 is divided into three parts: intellectual history, environmental studies, and critical thought from Karl Marx to Harry D. Harootunian. The author aims to explore “Japan's environmental turn, a broad historical moment [at the end of the nineteenth century] when Japanese thinkers and activists experienced nature as alienated from themselves and were forced to rebuild the connections” (p. 6). He then asks, “What sort of conceptions of nature can be the basis of a new politics adequate to the environmental crisis?” (p. 10). The most sustained and original parts of this deeply researched, relentlessly argued volume address the environmental ideas of the reformer and ecologist Tanaka Shōzō (1841–1913), the journalist and anarchist Ishikawa Sanshirō (1876–1956), and Kurosawa Torizō (1885–1982), founder of Snow Brand Dairy, for many years Japan's largest. Starting in 1877 the Ashio Copper Mine north of Tokyo contaminated the Watarase and Tone Rivers with copper waste and, during repeated floods in the 1890s, polluted nearby lands worked by hundreds of thousands of farmers. The earliest of modern Japan's environmental disasters, Ashio prompted Tanaka to make “a key breakthrough in environmental thought when he argued that humans could neither transcend nature nor completely control it” (p. 15). Until the early 1890s Tanaka was a loyal member of the Constitutional Reform Party “committed to Japan's modernization,” but once he confronted the Ashio crisis, his career thereafter showed “the limits of liberalism and its autonomous, private individual to deal with the unprecedented horrors of industrial pollution” (p. 66). In speeches to the national parliament (Diet) Tanaka argued that “the government has been completely overrun by the private power of the Furukawa zaibatsu,” owners of the Ashio mine (p. 71), leading to Tanaka's theory of “national death” (bōkokuron) in which a public Japan no longer existed; instead corruption, bribery, and private gain now ruled. In 1901 Tanaka and the socialist Kōtoku Shūsui (1871–1911) made a quixotic appeal (jikiso) to the Meiji emperor to remove the poisoned earth and make the Watarase River pure again. When this petition failed, Stolz notes, Tanaka abandoned “Meiji liberalism to develop a radical environmental politics” (p. 79).

Forest destruction and forest conservation project around Ashio Copper Mine

Forest destruction and forest conservation project around Ashio Copper Mine

Rodo wa Shinsei nari, Ketsugo wa Seiryroku nari: Takano Fusataro to Sono Jidai (Labor is Sacred, Unity is Strength: The Life and Times of Takano Fusataro)

In this long-awaited biography of Takano Fusatarō, a study of one of Japan's most important early labor organizers and itself a labor of love, Nimura Kazuo takes his readers on a remarkable journey through Japan and the US of the turn of the 20th century with a remarkable example of the historian's craft. This is Nimura's second major book, following his (1985) prize-winning study of the Ashio Copper Mine dispute and riot of 1907.1 In some ways it is hard to imagine two more different works. The Ashio study examined a three day incident in exhaustive detail with a laser-like focus on two basic questions of broad importance in social science and the study of labor in general: the presence (or absence) of social solidarity among mine workers and the dynamics of wage determination, changing technology and skill formation among those workers and their bosses. It effectively challenged key assertions in the social and economic thinking of two of the most eminent figures in 20th century intellectual life in Japan, Maruyama Masao and Ōkōchi Kazuo. This book, in contrast, offers a leisurely and meandering account of one man's entire life, albeit a short one (Takano was born in 1869, one year after the Meiji Restoration, and he died in 1904). It does seek to answer intriguing questions about Takano himself, and about the character of the labor movement of Japan's early industrial era, and challenges some accepted views of Japan's labor history, but the interpretative stakes are significantly lower than in the Ashio work, with no such eminent figures as intellectual sparring partners. At a leisurely pace, the book vividly conveys a sense of a bygone era in both the US and Japan, offering views of social and economic life and of political ideas in varied locales in each country. Some of my favorite sections are found where the author pauses along the roadside, as it were, to reflect on interesting matters he has uncovered in his investigation, even if they are not directly relevant to answering his main research questions.

足尾銅山の廃水処理対策の変遷に関する研究 －浄水施設を中心に－

足尾銅山の廃水処理対策の変遷に関する研究 －浄水施設を中心に－

Characteristics of UTSUNO Explosive Warehouses in ASHIO Copper Mine as Industrial Heritages

Characteristics of UTSUNO Explosive Warehouses in ASHIO Copper Mine as Industrial Heritages

Characteristics of UTSUNO Explosive Warehouses in ASHIO Copper Mine as Industrial Heritages

Characteristics of UTSUNO Explosive Warehouses in ASHIO Copper Mine as Industrial Heritages

Chemistry and Sulfur Isotopes of the Chert-Clastic Sequence Surrounding the Kajika Massive Sulfide Ores at the Ashio Copper Mine, Ashio Terrane, Central Japan

Abstract. Chemical and sulfur isotopic compositions were obtained for a series of rocks within the chert-clastic sequence surrounding the Kajika massive sulfide ore horizon at Shibukawasawa in the Ashio copper-mining district, Ashio Terrane, central Japan. The sequence is lithologically classified into three units: chert, siliceous shale with basic volcanics, and sandstone-shale, in ascending stratigraphic order. The Kajika ore horizon corresponds to the lowermost part of the unit that contains siliceous shale with basic volcanics. The rocks around the Kajika ore horizon are enriched in P2O5 (max. 0.22 %), Ba (max. 2400 ppm), Cu (595 ppm), V (323 ppm), Pb (168 ppm), Zn (124 ppm), and Mo (24 ppm) in siliceous shale; and Ba (4220 ppm), Zr (974 ppm), Cr (718 ppm), Ni (492 ppm), V (362 ppm), Zn (232 ppm), Nb (231 ppm), and Co (71 ppm) in the basic volcanics. The siliceous shale is enriched in a number of redox-sensitive elements such as Cu, V, Pb, Zn, and Mo, which are known to be enriched in black shale and anoxic and hydrothermal sediments. The δ34S values of sulfides in the chert and sandstone-shale lie in the range of 0±2 %, and those in the siliceous shale range from -5 to -14 %. The measured δ34S values in the basic volcanics are -0.3, -2.7, and -31.5 %. These heavier δ34S signatures (around 0 %) recorded throughout the sequence indicate that the rocks formed under anoxic bottom-water conditions. Slightly lighter δ34S values recorded in siliceous shale might reflect significant mixing of sulfides that formed by sulfate-reducing bacteria in an overlying oxic environment. The long-term duration of anoxic conditions indicated by the heavier δ34S signature is considered to have played an important role in protecting the Kajika sulfide ores from oxidative decomposition and preserving the ores in sedimentary accumulations.

Recent Heavy Metal Concentrations in Watarase Basin around Ashio Mine

d Pollution in the Watarase River caused by min- eral wastewater containing high levels of copper dis- charged during the development of the Ashio Copper Mine is one of the most well-known environmental pollution problems in Japan, and has been called the Starting line of environmental pollution problems in Japan. In this study, we conducted follow-up investi- gations on the conditions of pollution in the Watarase River since 1991, and measured the heavy-metal lev- els in water in other rivers near the Watarase River and in soils around them. In addition, we compared the results in this study with previous results, i.e. pol- lution conditions in the Watarase River, other rivers and soils. Six points in upstream sites of the Watarase were chosen for sampling. Six samples from river wa- ter, five samples from soils around the respective points, and three samples from tap water distributed there were collected for the analysis. Heavy metal levels in rivers and soils around the Ashio Copper Mine were significantly lower than the environmental standards for them. When compared with our previous investi- gations, the levels of polluting heavy metals around the closed refinery at the Ashio Mine were gradually but clearly reduced. In conclusion, the environment around the Watarase River has been steadily improved so that safety in the living environment is assured.

Volatile organic compounds of the tap water in the Watarase, Tone and Edo River system

The chlorination of river water in purification plants is known to produce carcinogens such as trihalomethanes (THMs). We studied the river system of the Watarase, Tone, and Edo Rivers in regard to the formation of THMs. This river system starts from the base of the Ashio copper mine and ends at Tokyo Bay. Along the rivers, there are 14 local municipalities in Gunma, Saitama, Ibaragi and Chiba Prefectures, as well as Tokyo. This area is the center of the Kanto plain and includes the main sources of water pollution from human activities. We also analyzed various chemicals in river water and tap water to clarify the status of the water environment, and we outline the problems of the water environment in the research area (Fig. 1). Water samples were taken from 18 river sites and 42 water faucets at public facilities in 14 local municipalities. We analyzed samples for volatile organic compounds such as THMs, by gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and evaluations of chemical oxygen demand (COD) were made with reference to Japanese drinking water quality standards. Concentrations of THMs in the downstream tap water samples were higher than those in the samples from the upperstream. This tendency was similar to the COD of the river water samples, but no correlation between the concentration of THMs in tap water and the COD in tap water sources was found. In tap water of local government C, trichloroethylene was detected. The current findings suggest that the present water filtration plant procedures are not sufficient to remove some hazardous chemicals from the source water. Moreover, it was confirmed that the water filtration produced THMs. Also, trichloroethylene was detected from the water environment in the research area, suggesting that pollution of the water environment continues.

12 黎明期の国産電気機関車製造について

The first domestically-built electric locomotive is said as locomotive which used at the Ashio Copper Mine of Tochigi Prefecture. Wheel arrangement of this electric locomotive was 0-4-0,and built in 1893 by the Ashio Copper Mine Works. Later, this works renamed as Ashio Seisakusho and later renamed again as Furukawa Kikai Kinzoku Co.. In addition to this example, other five examples of electric locomotive building are introduced. They are as follows, 1) The 0-4-0 mine-type electric locomotive built in 1911 by Hitachi Ltd, 2) The Class ED40 (former Class 10020) 0-8-0 Apt-type electric locomotive built in 1919 by Omiya Works of Railway Agency (later, Ministry of Railway), 3) The Class ED15 (former Class 1070) 0-4・4-0 trunk-line electric locomotive for freight trains built in 1924 by Hitachi Ltd., 4) The Class EF52 4-6・6-4 trunk-line electric locomotive for passenger services designed in 1928 by Ministry of Railway., 5) The No.1 0-4・4-0 convex-type electric locomotive built in 1916 by the Sakai Higashi Works of Osaka Koya Railway (later, Nankai Electric Railway).

Environmental monitoring of historical change in arsenic deposition with tree bark pockets.

ICP-MS analysis recorded historical change (c. 1846 to 2002) in the arsenic concentration of bark included within the trunks (tree bark pockets) of two Japanese oak trees (Quercus crispula), collected at an elevated location approximately 10 km from the Ashio copper mine and smelter, Japan. The arsenic concentration of the bark pockets was 0.016 +/- 0.003 microg cm(-2) c. 1846 (n = 5) and rose 50-fold from c. 1875 to c. 1925, from approximately 0.01 to 0.5 microg cm(-2). The rise coincided with increased copper production in Ashio from local sulfide ores, from 46 tons per year in 1877 to 16,500 tons per year in 1929. Following a decline in arsenic concentration and copper production, in particular during the Second World War, a second peak was observed c. 1970, corresponding to high levels of production from both local (6,000 tons per year) and imported (30,000 tons per year) ores, smelted from 1954. Compared to the local ores, the contribution of arsenic from imported ores appeared relatively low. Arsenic concentrations declined from c. 1970 to the present following the closure of the mine in 1974 and smelter in 1989, recording 0.058 +/- 0.040 microg cm(-2) arsenic (n = 5) in surface bark collected in 2002. The coincident trends in arsenic concentration and copper production indicated that the bark pockets provided an effective record of historical change in atmospheric arsenic deposition.

The Ashio Riot of 1907: A Social History of Mining in Japan.

In The Ashio Riot of 1907, Kazuo Nimura explains why the workers at the Ashio copper mine - Japan's largest mining concern and one of the largest such operations in the world - joined together for three days of rioting against the Furukawa Company in February 1907. Exploring an event in labour history unprecedented in the Japan of that time, Nimura uses this riot as a launching point to analyse the social, economic, and political structure of early industrial Japan. As such, The Ashio Riot of 1907 functions as a powerful critique of Japanese scholarly approaches to labour economics and social history. Arguing against the spontaneous resistance theory that has long dominated Japanese social history accounts, Nimura traces the labourers' unrest prior to the riots as well as the development of the event itself. Drawing from such varied sources as governmental records, media reports, and secret legal documents relating to the riot, Nimura discusses the active role of the metal mining workers' trade organization and the stance taken by mine labour bosses. He examines how technological development transformed labour-management relations and details the common characteristics of the labourers who were involved in the riot movement. In the course of this historical analysis, Nimura takes on some of the most influential critical perspectives on Japanese social and labour history. With a preface by Andrew Gordon and an introduction and prologue written especially for this translated edition, Nimura's prize-winning study - originally published in Japan - will interest scholars of labour history as well as Japanese social and intellectual history.

Profiles of a Teacher and a Student in Duncan Academy

In 1887, Ernest Wilson Clement came to Japan and taught English in Mito Middle School, while doing evangelical activities in Ibaraki Prefecture. But he thought a school solidly based on Christianity should be founded in order to realize his vision in Japan. So he returned to the U. S. in 1893 and raised money to open a new school. In the same year, he went back to Japan again as a Baptist missionary and opened the Tokyo Baptist Academy in the Tsukiji foreign settlement in the following year. In 1899 the school was moved to Ushigome and the name was changed to Duncan Academy. In 1905, a Higher Course was approved by the Government.Tasuku Sakata entered the school as one of the first Higher Course students. He was born in Akita Prefecture in 1879. His mother was the eldest daughter of Naiki Hinata, the captain of the “Byakkotai” Regiment of Aizu, which was famous for the suicides of its boy soldiers at the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Sakata had worked as a miner from his childhood due to the poverty of his family because the Aizu clan was defeated by the Meiji governmental army. After working in Ashio copper mine, he entered the cavalry school and became a teacher of horsemanship in the Military Academy. About that time, he also attended the Bible class in Duncan Academy. After serving in the Russo-Japanese war, he entered Duncan Academy fulltime, and went on to the First Higher School and Tokyo Imperial University. In 1919 he became the first principal of Kanto Gakuin Middle School in Yokohama.

第2回国際水法廷と「足尾銅山鉱毒ノ砥究」発表百周年

第2回国際水法廷と「足尾銅山鉱毒ノ砥究」発表百周年