Adorable butterflies live mysterious life on long migrating journey from Japan

October 29, 2017

Adorable butterflies live mysterious life on long migrating journey from Japan

Migrating creatures are not limited to birds, animals and fish. A kind of spotted butterflies, called "asagimadara" in Japanese, spend the summer in cool areas, mainly on highlands, in northern Japan and fly over the sea to southern Japan regions or Taiwan from late autumn to breed the next generation.
Chestnut tiger butterflies, so called in English, have pretty spotted wing patterns. The front wings, 4 to 6 centimeters in length, have semitransparent pale blue spots, while the rear wings are red or red-brown. When the wings are expanded, they are about 10 centimeters long.
The fact that asagimadara butterflies migrate from Japan to southern regions in autumn and fly back to Japan in spring in the following year came to be known through marking researches by groups of citizens in many parts of Japan since the 1980s.
Early researches revealed some asagimadara flew 1,000 to 1,500 kilometers from the northern and central Japan regions to the Nansei Islands, including Okinawa, but their migrating journey record was renewed almost every year later.
The current longest record, 2,246 kilometers, was reported in  2006, when a female asagimadara released with markings along with others in Yamagata Prefecture, northern Japan, in August, was found on an island near Taiwan three months later.
Researches joined by citizens have revealed their behaviors and flying routes, both northward and southward, but many parts of their life remain mysterious.
Why can they fly so long a distance? How do they feed themselves while flying across the sea? and where do they sleep at night?
The life of spotted butterflies, such as asagimadara, is about four months. This means that the asagimadara butterflies which fly southward from Japan and those which fly northward to Japan in the following year are not the same ones. They are all almost newly born when they start migrating, but they realize the timing of migration and the direction of migration. How?
The one can sometimes see asagimadara with their wings worn out. "It is just natural. Their wings get worn out, because they travel so long a distance," says a butterfly watcher living in southwestern Japan.
Many asakimadara are seen sucking nectar from certain kinds of flowers while in Japan in summer or on their way to southern regions in autumn.
In the southwestern Japan region of Kyushu, they are often found flying around thoroughwort flowers, called Fujibakama in Japanese, which is known as one of the "nanakusa" seven flowers of autumn. 
The nectar of the flower has a toxic agent. The fact that they seek nectar from Fujibakama flowers is taken to mean that they protect themselves from  insects or birds by obtaining the toxic nectar.
Recent studies show that the northern limit of their summer habitats is going up to the north. The timing of migration to their summer or winter habitats is said to be changing in recent years. These indications are taken as signs of the global warming.
"The tiny creature (asakimadara butterfly) "tells us what's happening in the natural environment surrounding us," said a person who is familiar with their habits. "They are just adorable, and we must be even friendlier with them."

Japan's manufacturing at crossroads, electronics giant Toshiba struggling for survival

September 28, 2017

Japan's manufacturing at crossroads, electronics giant Toshiba struggling for survival

The huge object stands right in front of Japan Railways Kurume Station in Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan. It is actually a drum-shaped clock with mechanical items built inside.
With a height of 5.9 meters and decorations on the pillar and on the base, the clock was established at the station square in 1999 in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of an inventor who hailed from Kurume City.
Hisashige Tanaka is well known to local people with his nickname, Karakuri (mechanism) Giemon.  Before dying at the age of 82 in 1881, 14 years after the Meiji Restoration, he designed and made a number of mechanical tools and toys.
His masterpieces include the "Yumihiki Doji" boy, a windup doll with an arrow fixed to the bow, and the "Jimeisho" perpetual clock which is said to have kept moving with a single wind for a year, with as many as about 1,000 handmade parts fabricated inside.
Displays about his life and works can be seen at Toshiba Science Museum, as a manufacturing factory he built in Tokyo in 1875 is known as the root company for Toshiba Corp., an electronics giant which has been globally active but is at the brink of collapse.
Toshiba is trying to keep going by selling its well performing assets, notably its flash memory division, but it is uncertain if the scenario goes well.
Passers-by who pay attention to the Giemon clock are limited, but some people look up at the object when the clock opens and starts a small show.
The clock face rotates and opens every one hour, from 8 in the morning to 7 in the evening. Then, mechanical miniature toys appear from the inside. Among them are the boy doll, who takes and shoots four arrows one by one, the perpetual clock and the figure of Giemon, who speaks about his works by himself while music is played for the 5-minute show.
Standing at the top of the clock are two chickens, who light the clock face when it is open.
Karakuri Giemon was born as the son of a tortoiseshell craftsman in the hub of Kurume, which was a castle town. He displayed a strong curiosity about invention from his childhood and started inventing mechanical toys.
He made a success by showing his works at various events in Kyoto, Osaka and elsewhere and then moved to Tokyo in 1873, when he was 74.
Giemon's statues can be found at a few places in Kurume. One of them stands at the entrance of a building which houses research companies and organizations at a riverside park.
Toshiba's fix is compared to the 2016 deal in which a Taiwan conglomerate bought Sharp Corp., one of Japan's time-honored electronics makers, to bail it out.
Sharp once made a big success by releasing many innovative products, including liquid crystal wall TVs, but its decline started soon because it failed to keep up with a competition from its rivals.
The deal was taken as an incident which symbols the decline of Japan's manufacturing industry with long years of craftsmanship. Meanwhile, Toshiba's plight is attributed to its failure in the atomic power reactor business.
Giemon's statue at the research complex appears to be worriedly watching Toshiba's current difficulty.
It is unknown whether Toshiba's fall can be averted, but the clock at the station square will keep ticking, assuring people that his legacies will be inherited to the future as the backbone of Japan's manufacturing spirit.

Japan's "Water Day" events focus on finiteness of water for today's daily life

August 30, 2017

Japan's "Water Day" events focus on finiteness of water for today's daily life

August is the hottest month of the year in most parts of Japan, and Japanese people get attracted to rivers, lakes, waterfalls and other water-cooled locations to dodge from the heat of the summer.

Japanese have seen themselves surrounded with abundant fresh water, notably river water, underground water and subterranean stream water, as the greater part of Japan's national land is occupied with mountains and forests in the Asian monsoon zone.
Japanese had so far felt that drinking water is not exhaustible, just like air, and free of charge, but they have come to believe that the supply of water is not unlimited any more. This reflects the years of urbanization since the 1960s and the influence of environmental pollution. They think that they have to adopt a water-saving lifestyle now.
The first day of August is designated as the "Water Day" in Japan. Various kinds of events and campaigns, mainly led by public organizations,  are held across the country in order to increase people's awareness about the finiteness of water for people's daily life.
The Water Day campaigns call for, in part, actively using rain water and recycled water for domestic use.
As of 2010, the use of rain water and recycled water at major facilities came to 260 million cubic meters a year. This accounted for 0.3 percent of the total amount of water supplied for domestic use across Japan.
A government-organized event for the Water Week, the week from August 1, calls for reviving the centuries-old custom of sprinkling water on the road in front of the house and elsewhere.
The custom, called "uchimizu," is expected to contribute to appeasing the effects of the heat island phenomenon and reducing the emission of ozone-depleting greenhouse gas from air conditioners during the summer time.
At a time when Japanese believe drinking water is not free any more, the consumption of mineral water is increasing steadily year by year. The per capita consumption of bottled mineral water grew to 19.6 liters in 2007, an increase of about 12 times from 1.6 liters for 1990. Today, water has become "a thing to buy" for them.
The use of mineral water is expected to increase further in the years ahead, but at the same time, Japanese are also becoming aware of the need to preserve precious water resources across the country.

Hot weather threatens volunteer work in flood-hit areas in southwestern Japan

July 30, 2017

Hot weather threatens volunteer work in flood-hit areas in southwestern Japan

The two local high school girls were serving bottles of cooled drinks to volunteers on their departure to assigned places in areas hit by recent floods and landslides in Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu, southwestern Japan.
They looked proud of their job which helps protect volunteers' physical condition amid a long spell of very hot weather toward the end of July.
The girls, accompanied with their boss, were manning one of the booths set up at the main volunteer reception facility in Asakura City, hardest hit by the disaster. The heavy rainfalls, which continued for a few days from July 5, triggered floods and mudslides in riverside areas  in the city and neighboring regions. leaving over 40 persons dead or missing and hundreds of houses damaged and inundated.

Kyushu, a largely rural region, has been ravaged by natural disasters twice in two years; an extensive killer earthquake hit Kumamoto Prefecture in April 2016.
Related local authorities and organizations appear better prepared than before to manage the post-disaster mess,  but the situation remains to be fully improved, for example, in terms of systems to sort out volunteers and properly support their jobs at the affected places, experts say.
Volunteer reception points in Asakura were flocked with volunteers on the first and second weekends after the disaster and as a result, some of them remained unregistered to be sent until in the afternoon. One volunteer was hit by a heatstroke and taken to a hospital.
Individual volunteers came up on weekdays and on weekend, while groups of volunteers came usually on the weekend.

As relief work made progress, many volunteers came in groups to the affected areas after being processed by dispatcher organizations. The system must be improved mainly for accepting individual volunteers on weekdays.
Individual volunteers must be divided into different segments--first-timers or not, and volunteer policyholders or not, and then, first-time volunteers receive orientation before being matched with others to be a team of 10 or so under a mutually selected leader.
"We have accepted 400 to 500 volunteers  a day this weekend, but there was no problem, because they had been well organized by a volunteer dispatcher before coming to us," said a leader in one of the affected communities.
"We could let them start their jobs quickly only after giving them a brief explanation," he said.  
Those dispatched for relief work in the community were mainly students attending a high school of Fukuoka City, the prefecture's capital.
The students kept working under a scorching sunlight as dust rose from the dried mud.
Some of them tried hard to take out mud from under the floor of inundated houses. Others collected the debris from the flooded areas and cleaned ditches buried with mud on an alley.
"We'll return to the community center where we were accepted this morning and take a lunch there, and then work again until 2:30 in the afternoon," a leader student said.
"This is our first day of activity here, because we just entered the summer vacation," he said. Part of the students are expected to be back again before their vacation is over.
Japan has come to realize that it should make itself even more resilient to natural disasters, not just by reinforcing hardware infrastructures for disaster prevention but also by enhancing software-related systems, such as those for early weather warning, quick evacuation to shelters and smooth volunteer acceptance.
The experience the student volunteers have obtained this time is expected to contribute to further refining Japan's disaster relief system from now on.

Japan's oldest irrigation canal lives with nature-loving people over centuries

June 30, 2017

Japan's oldest irrigation canal lives with nature-loving people over centuries

Japan's "tsuyu" rainy season from June to early July represents the start of rice planting in various parts of the country, the practice which reminds Japanese that they have lived on eating rice.
Japan's oldest irrigation canal, called Sakuta-no-Unade, has continued to water over 150 hectares of rice fields in Nakagawa town, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan.
The canal, which starts at a water gate built on the middle reaches of Nakagawa River,  has a total length of 5.5 kilometers.
The watercourse project is depicted in one of the oldest Japanese historical books, Nihon Shoki, compiled in the early 8th century. Precisely when the canal was dug remains unseen, but researchers surmise the oldest part of the canal system dates back to the second to third centuries, because a big ancient tomb excavated near the canal is believed to have been built for who ruled the area around the period.
The Sakuta canal is famous because of an episode linked to Empress Jingu, the legendary figure who appears in the book.
When people had difficulty cutting out through a big rock standing on the canal route, she prayed to the god that the rock would be removed, then a thunderbolt fell onto the rock and tore it apart.
The canal represents an important tourist asset for Nakagawa town, located south of Fukuoka City, the prefectural capital.
The town has the dual jobs of preserving the environment and landscape around the canal but at the same time, keeping the irrigation system in an active, workable condition.
If the canal bank is protected with modern stone walls only for the purpose of increasing convenience, will the landscape be well preserved?, a researcher doubts.
Water parks built along the canal enable people to get
them feel close to the aquatic environment. Nature-loving people are hoping to see an innovative design which will make it possible to preserve the historic and cultural value of the watercourse while maintaining and enhancing its irrigation functions.

Citizens pushing for rebirth project for Inokashira Ponds as Tokyo's oasis

May 30, 2017

Citizens pushing for rebirth project for Inokashira Ponds as Tokyo's oasis



The scenic Inokashira Ponds park has been loved by Tokyo citizens as a refreshing oasis in the big metropolis. The park, owned by the Tokyo metropolitan government, extends on an area of 380,000 square meters in Musashino and Mitaka in the western suburbs of Tokyo. In the center of the area are three ponds with a total area of 43,000 square meters, and in one of the bonds, people can enjoy riding small pleasure boats.
The Inokashira park turns 100 this year, overcoming hard years linked to environmental pollution.
Until around the 1960s, an estimated 10,000 tons of pure spring water had been gushing out a day in the area. But the springs then almost dried up, because a lot of wells were dug around the park to draw underground water.
Park operators had to use underground water to keep water for the ponds. But this failed to maintain the ecology in the ponds in a proper condition and as a result, various introduced species began to dispel indigenous species.
Toward the 100th anniversary, the park operators and a group of citizens got together to launch a rebirth campaign for the park. The operation features the "kaibori" dredging work from winter to early spring.
The first kaibori work was carried out in 2013, followed by the second one in 2015.
The third kaibori operation is scheduled to be held later this year. aimed at improving the quality of water in the ponds and getting rid of introduced aquatic species.
The operation has so far contributed to removing many harmful foreign species in the ponds, helping to get the ecology back to the original condition.
The dredging has also helped to restore the original life cycle from small aquatic creatures and waterweeds to indigenous fish and birds, such as a crucian carp and a dab-chick.
The kaibori volunteer team includes 40 citizens registered as regular members.
The operation starts with catching aquatic creatures in the dredged ponds and dividing them into indigenous ones and foreign ones. After that, the pond bottom is exposed to the sun for several days to clean up the environment. Then, water is funneled back to the ponds, and only indigenous species are returned to the ponds.
Unstable weather continued in spring this year in Tokyo and neighboring regions. But people are having difficulty adjusting themselves to unusually hot weather in recent days. This makes them feel the importance of the refreshing aquatic environment even more strongly in their daily life.

Azalea featuring flower events enliven people in Kurume, southwestern Japan

April 30, 2017

Azalea featuring flower events enliven people in Kurume, southwestern Japan


Kurume City, southwestern Japan, becomes something like a town-wide flower park dominated by light and red purple azaleas around this time of the year.
Azalea, or tsutsuji in Japanese, is known as the city's flower, and events featuring the flower are held at various places from April to May.
The biggest tsuttsuji-featuring event takes place at a scenic riverside park.
The origin of azeleas in Japan, a wild one, is said to have come from Kagoshima in the southern part of Kyushu, southnwestern Japan. The original Japanese azalea, called Kirishima, spread to many parts of Japan early in the 17th century in the Ero era, when a gardening boom occurred among wealthier people.
Charmed with its beautiful colors, horticulturists tried to grow various seedlings. Decades of endeavors to develop more beautiful species followed, and in the first half of the 19th century, a samurai in the Arima clan in Kurume came up with a unique moss-based nursing method.
This contributed to growing new species with vivid colors and small, thickly blooming flowers.
Species developed with his method became to be called "Kurume Tsutsuji" in the Meiji era. The Kurume Tsutsuji brand then caught on well with flower lovers across Japan.
A main part of the event at the riverside park, opened in 1989 in commemoration of the centennial of the town's inauguration as a city. is an annual flower and plant market, where visitors can find their favorite ones. On every weekend, a gardening clinic is open at a booth at the event site. One day, a middle-age couple were asking a senior gardener at the booth how to grow a certain flower.
Satisfied with the gardener's advice, the wife said, "Thank you, sir. Your information was very much useful. We have to write it down."
The name of Kurume Tsutsuji has come to be widely known among people in the city, an old castle town with a population of about 300,000. But most of them little know that the brand is linked to the nursing method developed by the Kurume samurai, Sakamoto Genzo. A program to introduce Sakamoto's feat was provided in an event at a different site.
Kurume is home to Bridgestone Corp., the world's largest automotive tire manufacturer, which has continued philanthropic activities for local people over years.
Azalea flowers, which can be found here and there in the city, have become an important part of Kurume citizens' daily life.  If the Ero era samurai's work is well remembered among them, azeleas should be even more charming and attractive to them.