Edo and water

Abstract

Since my return from Oxford University, I have been continuing my research on water transportation and learned that wooden locks were constructed and used in Japan in the eighteenth century, when water transportation had been developed through the use of pound-locks and other locks on the River Thames. I have also come to be interested in water itself since I visited Nepal in 1987, where I observed scenes of women and children with pots in their hands gathering to collect water. I later served as the Honorary President in the 3rd World Water Forum held in 2003 in Kyoto, Shiga, and Osaka, and more recently, assumed the post of the Honorary President of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB) from 2007 until 2016. I gave keynote addresses at venues including the World Water Forum and the UN Special Thematic Session on Water and Disasters, and thus, the interest in the issues on water is now one of my life’s works.