<特別寄稿>我等が斜面の日々

Abstract

I have briefly described the relationship between slopes of Japan and the lives of the Japanese people from the past to present. The mountain slopes of Japan are covered with a huge amount of Holocene slope deposits. The old mountain villages are located on landslides, and the Japanese are a people who have lived with landslides. We can also find slope deposits by historical earthquakes, and some old folk customs on landslide villages. Due to the post-war changes in socio-economic system, urban landslide disaster became prominent and serious. Repeated earthquake disasters have revealed the remarkable risk of embankment of residential area in urban region. The “foretold disaster studies” involved the socio-economical perspective are proposed as a new discipline that comprehensively investigates the risks involves in the “semi-hazardous place”, which is a grey zone of safety. The purpose of this new discipline is to try to restore the “wildness” of the Japanese with geological literacy.