Coping with Natural Hazard Risk: Civil Engineering, Floods and Landslides in the Modernization of Japan (Scholars Award)

该项目探讨了日本在向现代社会过渡期间，对大范围洪水和山体滑坡的技术和社会反应如何发生变化。1800年时，日本政府高度分散，到1900年时，日本已经成为一个强大的、有能力的国家。处理灾害的责任主要从地区和村庄转移到中央政府。新政府（1868-1912年）改变了地方行政和税收，重新定义了村庄可用的资源，以解决洪水/滑坡改善，就像新的工程技术从西方进入日本一样。在整个19世纪和20世纪，世界和日本都看到了工程技术和材料方面的重大创新，这些创新改变了旨在减轻这些危害的公共工程的机会和成本。新的成本/效益平衡在日本和其他地方引起了对这种努力的广泛重新评价。通过对新泻县的深入案例研究，探讨地方、县和国家的政治和行政组织如何适应自然灾害的挑战，并解决与土木工程新做法相关的不断变化的机会和问题。该项目是基于历史学家的传统工具--仔细阅读档案资料和定性分析。主要重点是探索各级政府，工程学会，公共利益团体和报纸报道的记录。关于洪水频率和范围的良好记录使我们能够评估防洪工程的有效性，分区等减少洪水及其对19世纪和20世纪生命和财产损失的影响。过去一个世纪的降水数据沿着土壤图、数字高程模型等将被用来补充传统的历史资料来源，以便在进行时间和空间比较时考虑自然条件的影响。将新泻与日本其他地区进行比较，有助于评估从新泻得出的结论对整个日本和一般现代化社会的适用性。智力上的优点。1)该项目阐明了技术变革和现代化国家的相互作用，这是日本历史和非西方背景下的技术史中一个未充分研究的主题。2)它探讨了新的土木工程技术不仅传播到日本，而且超越其主要的大都市知识中心到各省的程度。3)它评估了河流管理的传统技术（在第二次世界大战期间主要占主导地位的地方实践）和现代实践的相对有效性，评估了两套技术的影响。4)它探讨了公众对政府支持的河岸工程和新技术在当代环境意识之前以及今天的收益和成本的重新评估。对西方背景之外的技术发展和转让的研究是有限的，典型的例子是那些能够促进大规模项目的中央政府（殖民地或后殖民地）。这种研究强调以“国家”为研究单位。这项研究，而不是探讨自愿进口的土木工程技术和它的扩散到更“普通”的使用领域。它解决了更广泛的社会影响和挑战，而不是与强大国家的着名大型项目相关的挑战。这种背景特别适合理解当今现代化社会所面临的问题，特别是因为日本发展了当代社会试图避免的极端依赖和屈从的外部关系。日本所面临的技术扩散和整合的问题，沿着她试图解决的问题的命运，对于理解过去在其他社会发生的事情具有重要意义（例如，传统做法和现代做法之间的联系）以及在当今发展中国家规划自然灾害减轻工作时应解决哪些问题（例如，根据特定社会的情况调整解决办法）。

This project explores how technical and social responses to widespread flooding and landslides in Japan changed during its transition to a modern society. Highly decentralized in 1800, by 1900 the Japanese state had become a strong, capable state. The responsibility for addressing hazards moved largely from districts and villages to the national government. The new government (1868-1912) transformed local administration and taxation, re-defining the resources available to villages to address flood/landslide amelioration just as new engineering techniques entered Japan from the West. Throughout the 19th and well into the 20th centuries, both the world and Japan saw significant innovations in engineering technology and materials that transformed both the opportunities for, and costs of, public works designed to ameliorate these hazards. New cost/benefit balances provoked widespread re-evaluation of such efforts in Japan as elsewhere. An in-depth case study of Niigata prefecture is used to explore how local, prefecture and national political and administrative organizations adapted to the challenges of natural hazards and addressed changing opportunities and problems associated with the new practices in civil engineering. The project is grounded in the traditional tools of the historian--careful reading of archival sources and qualitative analysis. Primary emphasis is on exploration of records of multiple levels of government, engineering societies, public interest groups, and newspaper reports. Excellent records exist on flood frequency and extent that permits us to assess the effectiveness of flood control projects, zoning, etc. in reducing flooding and its impact on loss of life and property in the 19th and 20th centuries. Precipitation data for the past century along with soil maps, digital elevation models, etc. will be used to supplement traditional historical sources in order to consider the impact of natural conditions when making comparisons over time and space. Comparison of Niigata with other regions of Japan helps to assess the applicability of conclusions drawn from Niigata to Japan as a whole and generally to modernizing societies. Intellectual merits. 1) The project illuminates the interaction of technological change and the modernizing state, an under-studied topic in Japanese history and the history of technology in non-Western contexts. 2) It explores the degree to which new civil engineering technologies not only spread to Japan, but beyond its major metropolitan intellectual centers to the provinces. 3) It assesses the relative effectiveness of traditional techniques of river management (which largely dominated local practice through World War II) and modern practices, evaluating the impacts of both sets of technologies. 4) It explores public re-evaluation of the benefits and costs of government- supported riparian works and new technologies in the period before contemporary environmental consciousness as well as today.Broader impacts. Study of technological development and transfer outside of Western contexts is limited, and typical examples are those of central governments (colonial or post-colonial) capable of promoting large-scale projects. Such studies stress "states" as the unit of study. This study instead explores voluntary importation of civil engineering technology and its diffusion into more "ordinary" spheres of use. It addresses broader social impacts and challenges to adoption than those associated with prestigious large-scale projects of strong states. This context is especially appropriate to understand issues faced by modernizing societies today, particularly since Japan developed outside relationships of extreme dependence and subservience that contemporary societies seek to avoid. The problems of technological diffusion and integration faced by Japan, along with the fate of her attempted solutions, hold significant implications for understanding what has transpired in other societies in the past (e.g., links between traditional and modern practices) and what issues to address in planning natural hazard amelioration in the developing world today (e.g., adaptation of solutions to the circumstances of a given society).