Diappropriation
2022
Artist Statement
The framed photograph shows a Nikko mountain range hosting a deciduous forest in late November. It is printed on Awagami Factory’s murakumo kozo select natural washi paper and framed in Daiso’s poster frame.
“Landscape photography today is a largely gaudy form of travel photography which only serves the interests of the tourism industry.”1
-Hendrik Neubauer, Black Star: 60 Years of Photojournalism.
Like many tourists in Japan, I visited the town of Kinugawa Onsen in Nikko City, Tochigi Prefecture, to see the mountains changing color. The photographed mountains form the eastern border of the Kinugawa River and its town’s intriguing industry. Dotting the river are large ominous bath houses and hydroelectric power plants featuring pipe systems that rise and disappear into the bordering summits. Kinugawa Onsen promises the ability to bathe in rich water originating from the underlying Taki and Kinugawa hot springs.
Nikko used to be represented by a different type of industry. Nikko was home to miners who worked in the Ashio copper mine southwest.2 The copper industry contributed hospitals, supermarkets, kindergartens, schools, residences and coal to the local region.3 Moreover, the influence of the Furukawa Copper Corporation extends to culture and traditions.4 Nikko’s modern identity includes ice hockey which traces back to copper workers skating on the Waraku pond.5 The Waraku Odori festival has taken place since Emperor Taishō’s visit of the facility in 1913 and the Waraku song celebrates a spirit of peace, harmony and prosperity between the copper industry and Nikko city.6
The Ashio Copper Mine began at the start of the 17th century when copper supported local construction and foreign trade with Holland and China.7 However its balance sheet was poor in 1876, producing 30,005 kg of copper at a loss the year before the mine was purchased by Furukawa Ichibē.8 Under Furukawa’s management, the mine was solvent after 7 years and by 1891, the Ashio mine was responsible for 40% of Japan’s copper production.9 Copper being Japan’s third most significant export, Ashio was an important asset for the nation.10
Environmental deterioration was noticed from the 1880s in the Watarase River which ran through the Ashio Copper Mine.11 Dead fish floated downstream, and people who ate from the river became sick.12 By the late 1880s, the fish in both the Watarase and Tone River were dead.13 Mine expansions during this period created a massive need for lumber so wood was taken indiscriminately from the surrounding hills.14 Deforestation sabotaged the watershed at the head of the Watarase resulting in a frequent toxic flooding that destroyed vegetation and gave farmers who tended the effected soil sores on their hands and feet.15 Water control required reforestation that proved difficult due to sulfuric acid from the mine rendering the surrounding hills infertile.16 In the mid-1890s, the more resilient nearby willow and bamboo groves died along with earthworms, spiders, crickets, and ants.17 Birds disappeared.18 There was lactation failure among mothers and increased infant mortality.19
A mythologizing story cropped up, as Fred Notehelfer from the University of California reports “Rumors in the village held that Tochigi Prefecture had been divided into heaven and hell; heaven was on the Nikko side of the mountains among the beautiful temples of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s mausoleum, hell was to the west in the land along the Watarase which most peasants now called the River of Death.”20
Notes
1. Hendrik Neubauer, Black Star: 60 Years of Photojournalism, trans. Adri van der Colff and Philip Jenkins (New York: Könemann, 1997), 311.
2. Masaaki Okada, “Local Evaluation of Technospace: A Case Study of Three Industrial Cities in Japan,” Icon 10, (2004): 90, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23787129.
3. Ibid., 89.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 90.
6. Ibid., 89.
7. Fred G. Notehelfer, “Japan’s First Pollution Incident,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 1, no. 2 (Spring, 1975): 352, https://doi.org/10.2307/132131.
8. Ibid., 353.
9. Ibid., 356, 361.
10. Ibid., 361, 367.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 362.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 362-363.
16. Ibid., 365.
17. Ibid., 367-368.
18. Ibid., 368.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 363.