Japanese Ports Research Articles

Simulated distributions of pumice rafts in Japan following eruptions at volcanic islands and submarine volcanoes

Voluminous pumice rafts produced by the 2021 phreatomagmatic eruption of Fukutoku-Oka-no-Ba, a submarine volcano located in the Izu-Bonin Islands, reached many Japanese ports and islands, damaging fisheries and hindering marine traffic and trade. This event emphasized the necessity for governments and stakeholders to develop plans in advance and prepare disaster mitigation measures before an eruption. To investigate when and to what extent pumice might intersect trade routes and arrive at islands after future eruptions, we conducted particle tracking simulations of eruptions at major volcanic islands and submarine volcanoes near Japan using the velocity field from the ocean reanalysis dataset. Seven major volcanoes that have produced pumice rafts in the past century were selected: the submarine volcano NNE of Iriomote Island, Izu-Tobu Volcanoes, Miyakejima, Bayonnaise Rocks, Nishinoshima, Kaitoku Seamount, and Fukutoku-Oka-no-Ba. We partly reproduced the distribution of pumice arrivals recorded after the 1986 Fukutoku-Oka-no-Ba eruption, demonstrating the potential effectiveness of the simulations. We report likely pumice raft arrivals and drifting durations for the investigated eruptive scenarios, which may aid future risk assessments for pumice arrivals.

Evaluation of Japanese port policies through network analysis

Although the Japanese government has implemented port reforms since the 1990s in response to declining international competitiveness of Japan's container ports, Japanese ports have continued to decline, at least in terms of containerized cargo handling volume. However, since the relative share of port handling volumes would naturally decline with the growth in other emerging Asian economies, it may be unfair to evaluate Japan's port policies or international presence solely in terms of cargo handling volume. This study evaluates Japan's port policies based on centrality analysis of Keihin and Hanshin Ports, which are the targets of the policies, in the context of global maritime container network. The results of the network analysis reveal that the rankings of Keihin and Hanshin in each centrality index have declined while major ports in Asia have consistently ranked high in the global marine container transport network. However, the increased importance of the Asian major ports in the network, combined with the strengthening of links of both ports to other Asian major ports, does not result in a decline in the presence of Keihin and Hanshin in the network as much as a decline in the ranking of cargo handling volume. In addition, the three scenario analyses confirm that Keihin and Hanshin would be further enhanced if the policy goal of strengthening domestic hub functions is fully achieved, and that a policy shift to dependence on hub ports in Asia for transshipment functions would ensure their presence on the network. In addition, as Japanese ports are highly dependent on Pusan, they are extremely vulnerable to the malfunction of Pusan in terms of network structure; thus, making Keihin and Hanshin function as domestic hubs is crucial to address this problem. Moreover, considering the vulnerability in the network structure in addition to the centrality index helps evaluate the reasonableness of Japan's port policies.

The Rediscovery of Japan: The Critical Reception of Japanese Architecture in Portugal after the Opening of Japan to the West

The opening of Japanese ports to the West in 1854 enabled the rediscovery by the rest of the world of Japan as a country, which, until then and throughout the more than two centuries of the Sakoku or closed country period, had maintained an isolationist policy in relation to the outside world. This opening up allowed for contact with Japanese art, including architecture, which was progressively absorbed by Western art, giving rise to Japonisme. Portugal was receptive to Japonisme, even if that receptiveness was motivated more by a taste for the exotic than genuine interest in the values of Japanese art. Even though its influence on Portuguese architecture was practically zero, Japanese architecture was divulged in Portugal. The aim of this paper is to determine an initial understanding of the reception of Japanese architecture in Portuguese books and architecture-related magazines published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The investigation is sustained in interpretative-historical research, and seeks to assess how the contact with Japanese architecture unfolded and also examine the reasons behind its dissemination in Portuguese publications. This assessment is preceded by a contextualisation that sets out to clarify the reception given to Japonisme in the Portuguese art scene.

The role of Dutch civil engineering in modern port planning in Japan (1870s–1890s)

ABSTRACT In the mid-nineteenth century, civil engineering and technological innovation began to play a major role in the modernization and westernization of Japan. From the 1870s to the 1890s, Dutch civil engineers worked with Japanese practitioners on the design of Japanese ports, a key starting point for urban development. This article explores the role of port and port city planning by Dutch civil engineers on the development of Japanese engineering and planning practice following modern construction methods and technology. It explores the degree to which port and water planning proposals that were associated with foreign forces influenced the development of civil engineering-inspired urban planning practice in Japan. The article examines three case studies of port planning: Nobiru, Mikuni and Yokohama. It shows that comprehensive planning proposals by the Dutch engineers, who combined water management and the construction of port basins and breakwaters with city development, were only partially implemented because they were not aligned with Japanese natural and technical conditions. Instead, Japanese professionals stripped the proposals of the urban context and adopted engineering technology. The fascine mattress technique for breakwaters and imported steam dredging machines became key elements for the construction of basins and the maintenance of modern port function.

Exploring the factors influencing the cost-effective design of hub-and-spoke and point-to-point networks in maritime transport using a bi-level optimization model

Hub-and-spoke (HS) networks are cost-effective because they allow the realization of economies of density. However, the cost of point-to-point (PP) networks may be lower than that of HS networks when certain conditions, such as cargo demand, bunker price, vessel size, and the shippers’ value of time change. This study explores the factors that influence the cost-effectiveness of HS and PP networks. We developed a mixed-integer programming model that allows for bi-level optimization between shipping lines and shippers. As a case study, we applied it to Chinese and Japanese ports, with both HS and PP networks. We found that high cargo demand increases the use of PP networks while enlarging vessel size increases the use of HS networks. These findings enable us to predict the occurrence of hubbing—shifting from a PP to an HS network—and de-hubbing—shifting from an HS to a PP network.

Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America's Tea Cups by Robert Hellyer

Reviewed by: Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America's Tea Cups by Robert Hellyer William Wayne Farris Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America's Tea Cups. By Robert Hellyer. Columbia University Press, 2021. 304 pages. ISBN: 9780231199100 (hardcover, also available as e-book). Did you know that three early American presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln—drank green tea? This intriguing fact is only one small way by which master storyteller Robert Hellyer draws readers into Green with Milk and Sugar. This outstanding book chronicles the tea trade between Japan and the United States over more than a century, from 1858 to about 1960. The author's interest in the tea trade is personal, as his family acted as tea exporters from Japan to the United States from about 1880 until the 1970s. Yet at the same time that Hellyer makes contributions to Japanese and US history, he more importantly takes a significant step toward elucidating world tea commerce through a deft accounting of [End Page 400] events in China, India, and Great Britain as well. Green with Milk and Sugar is really a world history firmly anchored in sources spanning Europe, Asia, and North America. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to what Hellyer terms "teaways" (p. 3), meaning the methods in which the beverage was consumed and displayed in society. After a brief history of tea in premodern Japan, the author describes the tea trade between China and Great Britain and ultimately the American colonies. Under the Canton system, the British surrendered silver to Qing China in return for both black and green teas as well as silk and porcelain. Once the United States was formed in 1787, the new country took control of its own trade. Even at this initial stage, US consumers drank more green than black tea, despite the Chinese use of pigments and other additives (such as prussic acid) in the former. From 1830 to 1836, the amount of tea sent to the United States doubled. As the new nation expanded westward, pioneers took tea with them. Another surge in tea consumption followed the Opium Wars (1839–1842). In chapter 2, "Civil Wars," Hellyer constructs parallel narratives of the internal conflicts that wracked Japan and the United States in the 1860s. After the unequal treaties opened some Japanese ports beginning in 1858, American importers (including one William Alt, who would eventually hire the Hellyer brothers around 1868) worked with Japanese brokers to ship tea to the United States. The author describes the firing of tea leaves in pans or baskets in Japan to make ready for the long journey across the Pacific and beyond. Surprisingly, Chinese experts provided supervision for about a thousand Japanese workers—men, women, and children—at first in Nagasaki. During the US Civil War, Chicago became a major rail hub, shipping 1.5 million pounds of mostly Japanese green tea to the thirsty residents of Illinois. Tea was dispensed to Union soldiers as provisions, while tariffs on this commodity helped pay for the war effort. By 1865, Japanese green tea was so common that Americans dubbed it "Japan Tea" (p. 52). The parallel narratives continue in chapter 3, which covers the period until about 1880. After the US Civil War, the federal government lowered tariffs, and Japanese and Chinese teas were sold in the United States at near parity. Yet Japanese tea carried an image in advertisements and trading cards that was decidedly more positive than that of the Chinese beverage. Both countries used additives in their tea leaves, but the adverse publicity seems mostly to have afflicted the Chinese. Illustrations for "Japan Tea" showed Japanese women in traditional garb with scenes from the archipelago, while the US temperance movement portrayed what it called "the Heathen Chinee" (p. 61). The Page Act restricted Chinese immigration to the United States as early as 1875, even as the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado served to boost the Japanese image starting in 1885. Still, US imports of tea should be kept in perspective with those of coffee (only 59 million pounds for the former versus 363 million pounds for the latter in 1879). Hellyer argues...

Analyzing Interactions between Japanese Ports and the Maritime Silk Road Based on Complex Networks

This article considers how the Japanese ports interact with the ports of China and along the 21st century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) while they are embedded in the global port network, especially in the context of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. At a port level, it primarily uses connectivity analysis to analyze the port relations and significances in the maritime network. In contrast, at the network level, it applies the methods from network sciences to analyze the significances of these maritime networks and the interactions among the maritime networks of Japan, China, and MSR. This article extracts a large-scale maritime network from ports and vessels’ profiles and data of vessels’ Automatic Identification System (AIS). It then examines the relations among the networks (including Japan, China, MSR, and global ports) after defining the maritime networks, network generation schemes, and port network analysis tools. Based on the analysis results and findings, this study draws some implications for regional ports and shipping development and the global supply network.

Realities and challenges of port alliance in Japan — Ports of Kobe and Osaka

Japanese ports have played a unique twofold role, managing marine terminals and at the same time developing seafront of their port cities for multiple uses. Due to this duality in role, ports are considered inseparable from the city's overall management, leading to port management by general local administration. Increasing competition with ports of East Asian counties, however, has compelled the national government to press major ports to make their terminals more efficient and competitive. Under the latest national port policy, Kobe and Osaka joined forces to form up the first strategic port alliance in the country. They established a joint port company in 2014 to manage their terminals in an integrated way. This paper investigates the Kobe-Osaka port alliance to assess how it works in reality and also discusses challenges and business opportunities. It is based on intensive interviews together with an overview of the historical evolution of Japan's container port policy and also a comparative analysis with recent cases of port alliance around the world. For Kobe and Osaka, in order to make the most of the synergy of this alliance, strengthening the autonomy of the port company and implementing a range of logistics strategies are important issues.

Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan by Miloš Debnár

Reviewed by: Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan by Miloš Debnár Rotem Kowner Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism: Europeans in Japan. By Miloš Debnár. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 235 pages. Hardcover, $99.99/€85.59. European migration to Japan began in earnest only some 160 years ago. One might argue that it started with the few hundreds of Jesuits who lived in Japan during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, or with the small handful of employees residing in the Dutch factory in Dejima during the subsequent two centuries. But in essence, both of those groups were short-term sojourners; they came for religious or trade purposes rather than for the sake of migration as such. The true age of migration began only with the forced opening of Japanese ports in the 1850s, which was followed by the country’s rapid modernization. Despite periodic swelling and shrinking in numbers, the flow of Europeans to Japan has continued ever since. Admittedly, the influx has always been small; despite the recent growth in the population of Europeans in Japan to around 60,000 (as of 2014), this number represents a mere 0.05 percent of Japan’s total population, less than 0.01 percent of Europe’s population, and as little as 2.7 percent of the foreigners living in the country. Given these minuscule percentages, it is natural to ask why this group deserves exhaustive study in the form of an academic book such as the one under review, written by Doshisha University sociologist Miloš Debnár. The answer to this question lies in this group’s importance, both real and symbolic, and in what it reveals about the host country. Europe and Europeans have undoubtedly played an important role in Japanese modernization and are still ascribed significance and respect out of proportion to the relative size of their representation in Japan or to Europe’s current impact on Japan’s economy and politics. Debnár’s specific reasons for focusing on this group are described in the book’s introduction, where he states that he is interested in the migration of “individuals from the Global North, West, or of people of white race” and “aims to contribute to . . . recent attempts [at] deconstructing the image of highly privileged migrants” (pp. 2–3). Deconstructing assumptions pertaining to countries of origin, type of migration, white privilege, and cosmopolitanism, he argues, “shows the complex character of social relations that migrants create and sustain in receiving societies” (p. 3). Japan was chosen as a representative of highly developed, non-Western countries, with the goal [End Page 164] of providing new insights into the increasing diversity exhibited in present-day migration and the outcomes of this trend. Despite its seemingly explicit sociological objectives, Migration, Whiteness, and Cosmopolitanism is more than just a case study on global migration in the twenty-first century. The book’s seven chapters offer an up-to-date look at fascinating aspects of Japanese society as well as the country’s intercultural relations and its unending love-hate relationship with the West. Following an informative introduction, chapter 2 provides an overview of the modern history of European migration to Japan and its current demographic structure. The next chapter focuses on three major types of migration: that involving high-skilled laborers or professionals, that related to international marriage, and that involving students. Debnár then takes up the “white privilege” enjoyed by Europeans living in Japan and the manner in which they transform this into various forms of capital. This is followed by one chapter investigating the limits and meanings of whiteness in the migrants’ everyday experience and another exploring the issue of cosmopolitanism as associated with Europeans. Chapter 7 ends the book by summing up its main findings and discussing their larger implications. Methodologically speaking, the book draws primarily on interviews with fifty-seven Europeans conducted between 2008 and 2012. Representing twenty-two countries as well as various ages and occupations, most of Debnár’s interviewees had resided in Japan for five to ten years. Although the book could have been enriched by the further use of primary sources, some of the interviews provide thought-provoking insights into...

Assessment of new scientific elements supporting the prolongation of prohibition of the placing on the market of genetically modified oilseed rape GT73 for food and feed purposes in Austria

Assessment of new scientific elements supporting the prolongation of prohibition of the placing on the market of genetically modified oilseed rape GT73 for food and feed purposes in Austria

Assessment of new scientific elements supporting the prolongation of prohibition of the placing on the market of genetically modified oilseed rape Ms8, Rf3 and Ms8×Rf3 for food and feed purposes in Austria

Assessment of new scientific elements supporting the prolongation of prohibition of the placing on the market of genetically modified oilseed rape Ms8, Rf3 and Ms8×Rf3 for food and feed purposes in Austria

Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan by Louise Young

Reviewed by: Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan by Louise Young Miriam Kingsberg Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan. By Louise Young. University of California Press, 2013. 326 pages. Hardcover $85.00/£62.95. Beyond the Metropolis understands the city not simply as a concentration of individuals, institutions, and infrastructure, but also as a sociocultural network and ideological entity. From a vantage point beyond Tokyo, it examines what author Louise Young refers to as Tokyo-centrism: a cultural geography originating in the interwar context of rapid urban growth that privileged the capital while marginalizing the rest of national space. Young takes pains to emphasize that Tokyo in the Japanese imagination was hardly consistent with actual assemblages or experiences of the metropolis. As historiography has shown, Tokyo was an expanding, dizzying sprawl of suburbs and slums with no clear “center.” Yet deprivation, danger, and disease failed to tarnish its allure; rather, Tokyo-centrism operated through synecdoches both geographic (the glitzy commercial district of Ginza, for example) and human—including the moga (modern girl) and narikin (self-made millionaire). As a result of its overwhelming sociospatial hegemony, Tokyo has tended to dominate the literature on Japanese urban history. Breaking with this pattern, Beyond the Metropolis adopts the novel perspective of Japan’s “second cities,” a heterogeneous constellation in political, economic, cultural, and ideological thrall to the capital. The second cities of Young’s study are not the five major interwar conurbations—Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe—that simultaneously deferred to and defied (elements of) Tokyo-centrism. Rather, they are Japan’s prefectural and regional capitals, caught between a universalist view of urban modernity and a particularist concern for local relevance. Just as Tokyo framed itself against an uninterrogated rural space (as the rest of Japan was imagined to be), the capital itself offered an Other to second cities in creating unique urban identities. During the interwar period, each of these cities exhibited a specific developmental trajectory, profile, and relationship to surrounding regions. Through her analysis of the center from the perspective of the periphery, Young convincingly challenges our understanding of modernity as a passive diffusion resulting in convergence and homogenization. Her narrative instead highlights diversification and the agency of individuals, institutions, and ideas. As case studies, the author selects the cities of Kanazawa, Niigata, Okayama, and Sapporo. Sources including gazetteers, chamber of commerce records, company histories, social surveys and reports, tourist guides, travel diaries, local magazines and newspapers, city plans, memoirs, media productions, and fiction spotlight intriguing commonalities as well as differences. Niigata and Kanazawa originated as castle towns on Japan’s historically neglected Sea of Japan coast. Niigata, however, was one of the first Japanese ports opened to foreign trade in the nineteenth century; as such, it became a [End Page 241] gateway for Western imports, and, during the 1930s, for trade with Japan’s empire on the Asian mainland. Okayama, a castle town on the Pacific shore, and Sapporo, a frontier city amid the coalfields of Hokkaido, were situated relatively fortuitously, yet their development was as much or more the result of human actions as geography. During World War II, Okayama alone was devastated by Allied firebombing, but after 1945 all four cities forged new paths, influenced by but not dependent upon their prewar contours. Rather than organizing the book by city, Young provides an integrated, thematic, and loosely chronological treatment of all four locations. The first chapter, “World War One and the City Idea,” explores the association of urbanism and modernity in the early twentieth century. After Japan rejected the legal social order of the Tokugawa period, cities emerged as both symbols and instruments of progress and enlightenment. During the so-called Great War, they took on additional roles as epicenters and engines of the burgeoning industrial economy. The populations and infrastructure of cities, including second cities, expanded at a dizzying rate to accommodate growth. The imagination of the urban evolved in tandem with its function, producing a new “social consciousness of the modern” (p. 32) that distinguished city spaces from the putatively backward countryside. Young’s next chapter analyzes Tokyo-centrism from the perspective of culture. Convergence...

Insect Biodiversity in Meiji and Art Nouveau Design

Diverse insects, from butterflies to cicadas, have remained a consistent presence in the art of East Asia for millennia (Berenbaum 1995). In Europe, this has not always been the case—insects made occasional appearances in medieval manuscripts, usually as marginalia (Neri 2011, Nazari 2014); later, the Age of Exploration and the Linnaean era increased the prevalence of insects in scientific illustration, but insects actually became less popular in European fine arts from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries (Dicke 2000, Floyd 2009, Neri 2011). This trend in European art was quickly reversed before the turn of the twentieth century, when Japanese appreciation of insects reached Europe. In 1853, Japanese ports opened to the West; in 1868, the Japanese shogunate ended, and the new Meiji government came into power (Buruma 2004). The Meiji Restoration turned Japan, which had been a highly insular culture, to the West (Buruma 2004). The Meiji government established a European-style educational system with a particular emphasis on science and technology (Nakayama 1989). “Driven largely by the desire to avoid the colonization by Western nations witnessed in other parts of East Asia, a full-scale campaign on national self-definition and modernization, which in many ways looked like Westernization, was underway in Japan” (Saunders 2010). As Japan imported European ideas, Japanese art was exported to eager audiences in Europe (Weisberg 1975). The Japanese canon, comprised of works by masters such as Katsushika Hokusai, exerted a tremendous influence on European artists such as Edouard Manet, James Whistler, and Claude Monet (Weisberg 1975, Watanabe 1984, Inaga 2003, Ono 2003). Simultaneously, Western entomologists collected insects …

The rise of Chinese ports and its impact on major ports in East Asia

The economic rise of China and its implications for the rest of the world are well discussed in the literature. However, the literature on the rise of Chinese ports and how they could impact the ports in East Asia is very limited. Moreover, although there are few studies on the effect of Chinese port growth on the ports in East Asia, these are theoretical, descriptive or do not cover all major ports in China and East Asia. In this light, the objective of this article is to fill this gap by empirically investigating how the growth of Chinese ports has affected the major ports in East Asia and in particular the ports of Singapore, Pusan, Hong Kong, Kaohsiung, Keelung, Kobe, Tokyo and Yokohama. Co-integration tests are employed to determine the long-term nature of the impact and error correction models are constructed to determine any short-run impacts, using time series data on container throughputs for the period of 1980–2010. The results show that the impacts have been varied, with ports of Singapore, Hong Kong, Pusan and the main Japanese ports losing the bulk of their container business to mainland Chinese ports.

Long-term monitoring of feral genetically modified herbicide-tolerant Brassica napus populations around unloading Japanese ports.

Genetically modified, herbicide-tolerant (GMHT) Brassica napus plants originating from seed spill have recently been found along roadsides leading from Japanese ports that unload oilseed rape. Such introductions have potential biodiversity effects (as defined by the Cartagena Protocol): these include replacement of native elements in the biota through competitive suppression or hybridization. We conducted surveys in the period 2006–2011 to assess such threats. We examined shifts in the population distribution and occurrence of GMHT plants in 1,029 volunteer introduced assemblages of B. napus, 1,169 of B. juncea, and 184 of B. rapa around 12 ports. GMHT B. napus was found around 10 of 12 ports, but its proportion in the populations varied greatly by year and location. Over the survey period, the distributions of a pure non-GMHT population around Tobata and a pure GMHT population around Hakata increased significantly. However, there was no common trend of population expansion or contraction around the 12 ports. Furthermore, we found no herbicide tolerant B. juncea and B. rapa plants derived from crosses with GMHT B. napus. Therefore, GMHT B. napus is not invading native vegetation surrounding its populations and not likely to cross with congeners in Japanese environment.

EFFICIENT LONG-PERIOD WAVE ABSORBING SUBMERGED MOUND STRUCTURE

In many Japanese ports, it has been reported that long-period waves with periods of 30 to 200s cause serious problems in cargo handling. As a countermeasure, wave absorbing mounds installed on the harbor side of breakwaters have been constructed. The crown heights of such rubble mounds are almost equal to those of the caissons. Although such structures can be expected to provide some wave absorbing performance, they are too large to apply to specific site conditions. It is important therefore to reduce the size of the structure to apply to specific site conditions. In our study, a slightly submerged mound type long-period wave absorbing structure is proposed. A series of hydraulic model experiments was carried out to evaluate the wave absorbing performance in port and stability characteristics of the armor units against wave overtopping from the sea side. Throughout this study, it became clear that submerged structures display a higher wave absorbing performance compared with those of conventional structures. Moreover, a prediction formula for the stability number for Tetrapods covering these submerged mounds is proposed.

Identification of Japanese Lymantria species (Lepidoptera: Lymantriidae) based on PCR–RFLP analysis of mitochondrial DNA

A polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR–RFLP)-based method for species identification was applied to seven Japanese Lymantria species, including four Asian gypsy moth (AGM) species. We sequenced the partial end of the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene, tRNA leucine, COII gene, and partial end of the tRNA lysine in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) for one individual of each of the seven species. We analyzed the recognition sites of three restriction endonucleases and constructed a scheme for Lymantria species identification using PCR–RFLP. We then applied the scheme to 291 individuals from 45 populations of seven species. We found that all seven species were correctly identified using PCR–RFLP. These results suggest that PCR–RFLP is useful for identifying Japanese Lymantria species, which may be detected at Japanese ports.

Risk Perception and Communication in International Maritime Shipping in Japan after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Disaster

This paper investigated the contamination-related impact of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan on seaport activities and international maritime shipping. Risk perception and risk communication after the disaster were analyzed. The maritime-related newspaper articles published in Japan after this disaster were extensively reviewed. Eleven maritime-related agents, including port managers, governments, shipping companies, port operators, and shippers, were interviewed. These interviews were conducted from June to December 2011. The results of the interviews revealed that the contamination-related impact of the power plant disaster comprised impacts on ( a) major Japanese ports, including Keihin ports, that were skipped (not called at) by 42 container vessels operated by non-Japanese shipping companies; ( b) foreign ports and the measurement of radiation of Japanese cargo; and ( c) actions taken by the Japanese government and port managers. The framework of social amplification of risk communication was used to explain the events observed after the disaster. Use of this framework suggests that the risk communication made by maritime stakeholders successfully reduced the amplification of risk among stakeholders at various levels of information sources, information channels, and stations. A summary of lessons from the study includes the identification of factors that influenced the amplification of risk, quick responses, and appropriate countermeasures by authorities and port managers, and the introduction of systematic radiation measurement under the international agreement.

In Memoriam: Yoshimi Goda

The authors are sad to inform their colleagues in the coastal engineering community of the sudden demise of their research leader, the renowned Professor Yoshimi Goda. He passed away on January 19, 2012, at the age of 76 years. The authors are still struggling to accept this event. Just one day before his death, upon receiving word of his critical condition, one of the authors went to visit Professor Goda. Although he was not well at that time, he recognized his visitor and askedwhether the Coastal Development Institute of Technology made the necessary contributions to the recovery of Japanese ports from the serious damage they sustained during the huge tsunami on March 11, 2011. When leaving after an hour of conversation, the visitor grasped the hands of Professor Goda, who responded with a powerful grasp. The visitor firmly believed that Professor Goda would live longer, but the next day was informed about the news of his passing, and the authors felt incredibly sad. Professor Goda’s research abilities were much appreciated and recognized from his early years. His research activities in coastal engineering started during his employment at the Port and Harbor Research Institute (PHRI), Ministry of Transport of Japan, just after his graduation from Tokyo University in 1957. He often told us that his early research papers were frequently completely revised by his boss, Dr. Tsuruta, but the revisions became very rare after he returned from two years of study abroad. He was sent to the United States in 1961 by a Japanese government program to take classes and conduct research at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology under Professor Arthur T. Ippen. His research at MIT was on the theoretical analysis of harbor resonance. After he returned, he became the chief of the Wave Laboratory in 1967 and supervised several young researchers at PHRI. He was promoted to the post of director of the Marine Hydrodynamic Division in 1978 and transferred to the Hydraulic Engineering Division in 1980. Subsequent promotions saw him becoming the deputy director general in 1984 and later the director general of PHRI in 1986. He left the PHRI in 1988 to accept a professorship at Yokohama National University. He retired from the university with the title of Professor Emeritus in 2000 and simultaneously was offered the job of an adviser at the consulting company, Ecoh. Professor Goda often advised young researchers as follows: Research should not be conducted in problems that are 90% completed merely to advance the completion to 95%. Rather, problems should be tackled with 0% completion and advance them to a stage of 60 or 70%development. Even if a solution to a problem cannot presently be found,with persistence, a solution to the problem canbe hit upon in the future. This advice meant that young researchers should aim to be pioneers and not simply second-tier participants in their chosen research field. The authors think Professor Goda followed his own advice. Professor Goda energetically carried out new research work at the forefront of coastal engineering to apply the properties of random seawaves to the practical design of coastal and harbor facilities. Consequently, he attained high-quality research results, which are very popular; for example, Professor Goda’s formula for wave pressure, his analysis of random wave transformation, and his study on the statistical properties of random seas. These results were introduced into the technical standards for the design of port and harbor facilities in Japan. His research was extremely fruitful and greatly contributed to the development of coastal engineering in Japan as well as in the rest of the world. He also published books on coastal engineering for practitioners, in both Japanese and English. His motto in research was that it should be useful for practitioners. Professor Goda received several awards from the Japanese Society of Civil Engineering for his outstanding research results and his book publications, and also from the Japanese government for his enormous contribution to the progress of Japanese ports. He also received the prestigious International Coastal Engineering Award from the ASCE. The authors had frequently suggested to Professor Goda that he should take some rest for a while from his work because he worked much more than the average person. Instead, he surprised the authors with the publication of a new Yoshimi Goda (February 24, 1935eJanuary 19, 2012)

Study of microorganisms coming into the port of Vladivostok with ballast water of ships

The number and variety of heterotrophic and sanitary indicative bacteria in the ballast water of the Minotaur and Sunrise Wisteria tankers arriving from the ports of China and Japan are studied. It is found that ballast water coming into the port of Vladivostok from Japanese ports is less polluted than that from Chinese ports, which is defined as dirty and very dirty in the summer period. According to the pathogenicity of microflora, the donor ports can be arranged in the following series: Nantong > Longkou > Yangzhou > Laizhou > Mizushima > Iwakuni > Kawasaki. In ballast water of the Minotaur (from the Chinese ports), enterobacteria, the number of which exceeded the sanitary norms (by 40 or more times), and gram-negative mobile rod-shaped bacteria with an enzymatic type of metabolism resistant to heavy metals and antibiotics are singled out. For this reason, the habitats of these bacteria are characterized as insufficiently sated with oxygen and polluted by industrial and household water wastes. The sanitary indicator microorganisms are represented mainly by the following enterobacteria: Hafnia (37%), Enterobacter liqueface (22%), Citrobacter (15%), and Shigella (7%). According to data from a cytolytic test, the highest pathogenicity is found in Shigella, Hafnia, Citrobacter, and Salmonella.