2022 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
A Socio-Ecological Approach to Restoring River Connectivity and Rewilding Salmon as Keystone Species in the Kushiro River Watershed, Eastern Hokkaido, Japan
| Project/Area Number |
17K00699
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| Research Institution | Sophia University |
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Principal Investigator |
伊藤 毅 上智大学, 国際教養学部, 教授 (10646863)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
渡邉 剛弘 上智大学, 国際教養学部, 准教授 (50439337)
北島 義和 釧路公立大学, 経済学部, 准教授 (70782952)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2017-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | social-ecological system / the state / territoriality / hydrosociality / Hokkaido / Japan |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This research project has explored the fragmented nature of environmental regime that governs complex social-ecological relations in Hokkaido, which have also been shaped by power relations. Historically, the state’s territorial and technocratic claims over fisheries resources which had been the primary commodities of trade between Ezo and Japan’s mainland have co-constituted the modern, although contested and fragmented, foundation of environmental regime. These claims, contrary to their original intentions, resulted in the degradation of the environment and the depletion of fisheries resources.
Our research in the final year concentrated on analyzing historical documents and contemporary data, developing our original arguments, and writing a research paper by way of conclusion. Based on our research findings, our paper, entitled “River of Ice and Fire,” seeks to understand how social institutions and relations are punctuated by their environments including the climate, landscape, flora, and fauna from a perspective of river. We wrote this paper to be concerned with an environmental history of the Kushiro river which enabled and resisted the territorial expansion of a settler colony in Eastern Hokkaido. The paper argues that the territorialization of resource control and management by the Meiji government transformed the trade-centered use of the river into a modern river regime that resulted in the displacement of indigenous communities, restructuring of labor, and intensification access to natural resource extraction.
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