Nature-Culture Inter relationships in the Mekong Watershed

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This is an interdisciplinary research based on fieldworks at the watershed of the Mekong in China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.The outline of this survey is as follows.Associate Professor Takai studied the changes on the intention for eating cattle and water buffalos in northern and northeastern Thailand, and investigated its social sense. Associate Professor Nonaka conducted his research on the manners of using an insect, which is a part of natural resources, for food. Professor Akimich handled the issue of the process in domestication of fowls.He stated that it was not necessarily simple, and could be found in the complicated exchanges between nature and the world of human beings. Professor Takeda studied "folk costume", and is doubtful of its stability in terms of time. Associate Professor Fukao elaborately examined how the rubber plantations, which had been introduced mainly into the basin of Xishuang Banna in Yunnan, had influenced the environment.We, through this research, succeeded in making synthetic survey on the relationship between nature and the human culture in the valley of the Mekong from the viewpoints of genetics, the use of plants and animals, the habitat segregation and cooperation between ethnic groups and cultural and social aspects such as costumes and social structures We believe that this research has given us a clue to the possibility of cooperative use and administration of the international river, and to the solution of environmental problems, which cannot be separated by borderlines.As for the joint research in Yunnan, the manuscripts of the research report have already been completed, and will be published both in Japan and in China.