Water Management Transformation in Japan: Focusing on the Introduction of the Land Improvement Act

The purpose of the paper is to clarify how the introduction of the state-led water management system has been integrated with village-based water management system. In Japan, which has a long history of rice cultivation, even before modernization, village-based water management system was highly developed to use water for irrigation. This pre-modern village-based water management system has been altered by the intervention of state-led development and management policies. While The Japanese government placed a pre-modern village-based management system in modern law without ruining this management system, it created a new policy of hydraulic organizations called land improvement districts and reorganized a wider range of hydraulic organizations beyond village. Concretely, the Land Improvement Act introduced electoral districts, and Board Members consisting of representatives of those districts were organized. This created a new organization on a larger water development scale than village-based water management system. This study focuses on the board members who represent these districts and analyzes how the board members have affected village-based water management system, or, conversely, how the electoral districts are defined by village-based water management system. Furthermore, the impact of climate change on water management systems has become more pronounced in recent years, with the increased burden of water management for rice crops due to extreme heat waves and the demand for better control of water quantity in reservoirs and irrigation channels due to sudden heavy rainfall. How are current systems coping with these impacts of the natural environment? This paper will consider the transformation of the water management system and its limitations with a particular focus on the Mannoike Land Improvement District located in the area with the lowest rainfall in Japan as a case study, based on an analysis of interviews conducted with 16 board members. of interviews conducted with 16 board members.