Let’s go back to the time before the last war.
In those days, when you got on the Joetsu railway line bound for Niigata, a huge lake would come into view as the train neared its destination. It was never on the map, no matter how hard you might look. How could that be? Many visitors were quite confused by what appeared to be like an enormous lake.
The lake measured 11 kilometers east to west, and 10 kilometers north to south, covering approximately 10,000 hectares or about four times the size of Tokyo’s 23 wards.
The current JR Niigata Station as well as the entire downtown of Kamedagou area lie within the boundaries of this formerly unmapped lake.
So, why was the lake not on the map?
Because it wasn’t really a lake, but what looked like being covered by the shimmering water was all the farmland of the local rice-growers.
The man in the above photograph is not fishing. The “game” he is loading on his boat is not fish but soil.
Farmers worked on their land (which looked like a lake) as they sank shoulder-high in water. In the hope of leveling up their fields even just 1 millimeter higher, they would go out each year in boats to dredge scant amounts of mud from the river bed and spread it onto their fields. This process is known as kyakudo (literally “soil brought from other places” in Japanese) .
It was heavy labor done by entire farming households starting after the harvest in late autumn and continuing till snow began to pile up in winter.
Japan has many riverside and lakeside regions like the Itako district known as the “Venice of Japan” and the Saga Plains, famous for creeks.
Japan’s rice paddy societies all formed more or less through wetland cultivation in the riverside regions.
Farming in which boats were used was also not uncommon. Before the automobile, boats were the primary means for getting around and transporting goods.
However, using boats specifically for carrying soil, or practicing dobune nougyo (agriculture by dredge-boats) is thought to be unique to the Niigata Plain.