Japan Rethinks a Dam, and a Town Protests
Published: October 15, 2009
NAGANOHARA, Japan ? The clatter of construction machinery still fills this forested mountain
gorge, where legions of men in hard hats busily pour concrete, clear hillsides and erect a huge,
unfinished bridge whose concrete supports tower over the valley floor like crucifixes in an
immense graveyard.
It seems an apt analogy. Japan’s new government has suspended the $5.2 billion Yamba Dam being
built here and turned this valley four hours north of Tokyo into a symbolic final resting place for
the nation’s postwar order, which relied on colossal public works spending.
The Democratic Party government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has chosen this dam as the
first of 48 national government-financed dams that it wants to scrap, worth tens of billions of
dollars. Canceling it is widely seen here as the first major test of the new government’s ability to
deliver on campaign promises to revitalize Japan’s ailing economy by ending wasteful projects, and
in the process break the grip of the central planners in Tokyo’s powerful ministries.
Decades of pouring concrete have been widely blamed in Japan for cluttering rural areas with
needless dams and roads to nowhere. They have also saddled the country with the developed
world’s largest national debt ? nearly twice its $5 trillion economy. Mr. Hatoyama’s party has
vowed to replace Japan’s postwar “construction state” and the jobs it created with something
closer to a European-style social welfare system.
The Democrats, who won a landmark election over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party in late
August, have also promised to scrap planned airports and highways. But dams are particularly
symbolic because they were favored as a means of flood control and power generation by Japan’s
central planners, who have dammed almost every major river in the country, some more than once.
Japan had around 60 large dams under construction in 2005, making it the world’s fourth largest
dam-building nation, according to The International Journal on Hydropower and Dams, despite
having a land area smaller than California’s.
But the Democrats have run into opposition from an unexpected quarter: the small hot springs
town of Naganohara, part of which would be submerged by the reservoir created by the dam.
In what has become a David and Goliath battle, the town of 6,400 residents has put the new
government on the defensive. Many residents complain that the town’s livelihood now depends on
the dam, and particularly the compensation payments and construction jobs that accompany it.
“If the dam gets canceled, how are we going to eat?” asked Naganohara’s mayor, Kinya Takayama,
who noted that the dam was first proposed 57 years ago.
Tempers flared last month, when angry residents rejected an offer to meet the new minister in
charge of public works, Seiji Maehara, who visited the dam site.
Facing a wave of news coverage sympathetic to the town, Mr. Maehara signaled that even after
canceling the dam, Tokyo would finish relocation of the affected townspeople and complete the
roads and bridges that will link the new neighborhoods on higher ground.
That construction would cost $850 million, in addition to the $3.6 billion spent on the project so
far. This, and about $1.8 billion in compensation that Tokyo might end up paying to Gunma
Prefecture, where Naganohara is located, and other local governments could mean that canceling
the dam would prove more expensive than completing it.
The ferocity of Naganohara’s opposition has already forced the new government to reconsider the
scope of its dam-busting plans. Last Friday, Mr. Maehara said he would consult with local
governments to decide whether to cancel an additional 87 nationally subsidized dam projects that
he had originally vowed to scrap.
At the center of this costly battle lies what political experts call one of the thorniest legacies of
Japan’s enormous public works spending: the near total dependence of local communities on the
purse strings of the central government.
While public works spending is down from its 1990s peak, the construction industry continues to
dominate the economy, with construction companies this year employing 8 percent of all working
Japanese, twice the level in the United States, according to government labor statistics.
Mr. Hatoyama has vowed to cut spending even further, trimming an additional $14 billion this year
from Tokyo’s $88 billion public works budget. But political experts say his biggest challenge will be
to wean regional communities from their reliance on Tokyo.
“What’s happening at Yamba Dam is actually a revolution in the way Japan is run,” said Takayoshi
Igarashi, a professor of politics at Hosei University in Tokyo. “This would end Japan’s structure of
dependence on public works and central planning.”
In Naganohara, more than 20 construction companies employ about 400 people ? about 10 percent
of working-age residents. Local people say the town has already suffered hundreds of job losses as
ballooning national deficits forced cuts in public works earlier this decade by Junichiro Koizumi,
then the prime minister.
“I’m not wedded to the idea of building a dam here, but we need the public works to keep everyone
employed,” said Katsuyoshi Hoshino, the president of Miyako Construction, based in Naganohara,
which has 10 employees.
The town has tried to come up with its own alternatives for creating jobs, like turning the hot
springs into a “Diet Valley” of weight-loss spas for young women.
Local people admit that few of their ideas offer the financial benefits of the dam. While many of the
town’s original homes on the valley floor seem cramped and run-down, those being built on the
mountainside are large and modern, with solar panels on their roofs.
“The dam is like a drug that is making us addicted,” said Takuji Toyoda, 57, who owns a hot-springs
inn. “The money keeps pouring in every year to build things for us.”
In fact, some residents blame the dam and its construction for destroying the town’s original
economic self-sufficiency by forcing farmers to give up their fields and driving tourists away from
the hot springs.
Kichitaro Tomizawa, 69, a rice and vegetable farmer, said he resisted leaving his large, unpainted
wooden home because it had been in his family for four generations and was the place where as a
3-year-old he last saw his father, who died in World War II. But he said that once his neighbors
started relocating, he had no choice but to follow, because it takes entire communities to maintain
the irrigation ducts used for rice farming.
Mr. Tomizawa’s five-acre farm sits near the bottom of one of the huge crucifix-like concrete
pillars built to support a $60 million bridge that is to rise 250 feet above the valley floor ? high
enough to stand above the reservoir, should it ever take shape.
When pressed, few local people admit to liking the dam. But few can imagine how the town will
sustain itself without the project.
“We’ll have to find some other way to survive,” said Mr. Hoshino, the construction company
president. “But I can’t see that way now. The future is dark.”
