How can history help the never-ending human dance with water? | Aeon Essays

As storms, droughts and floods become more intense, what can the world learn from Japan’s profoundly wet history?

In early June 2018, I landed at Kansai airport in Japan, with a full day of travel ahead. A few hours later, I was sitting on a Shinkansen – the high-speed train connecting Osaka to Tokyo. Jetlagged, I tried to concentrate on the countryside as it streamed by at over 300 km per hour. Water was everywhere: a steady flow of wetlands, historical paddy fields, embankments. It was a watery procession, occasionally interrupted by a tangle of power lines and packed houses, the scars of centuries of hydraulic struggle. What I saw was the symptom of a universal story. All societies are locked in a…

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