`The first section of construction`

£ A saruo in Ishida ( the remains )



Between Sofue Town Aichi PrefectureEShimmeizu waju ( a place surrounded by banks ) and Kuwabara Town Hashima CityEKoyabu waju

       gSaruo hare banks that are about 5 meters wide and about 100 meters long from th     
riverbank to the middle of the river for weakening the river currents at the winding parts of 
the river and at the parts that the currents hit strongly when typhoons and heavy rains       
come. The one that has kept its original form still now is a saruo in Ishida ( Ishida Town    
Hashima City ). Saruo are formed by piling up the many slender bamboo baskets that are        
filled with a lot of stones on the riverbeds. The riverbeds have sandy soil without any stones
and they are very soft, so that no matter how many stones you put into the river, stones sink 
into the riverbeds. Therefore Hanshi used the bamboo baskets with stones when they            
constructed saruo. But stones were washed away by heavy rains, so they used the SLENDER       
bamboo baskets ( called snake baskets ) filled with stones. A standard size of the slender    
bamboo baskets is 30 centimeters across and 5-6 meters long. As it depends on the depth of    
the river, they needed about 4-6 thousand bamboo baskets to finish off the construction       
( presumption ). Next is a underwater work after the bases on the riverbeds. They needed to   
pile up the baskets until coming them upon the water.                                         
     In those days they couldn't stop the current of the Kiso river because they didn't have  
any technique to do that. So it was very hard work that some people were almost drowned       
when they drove stakes under the water to fix the bamboo baskets and some couldn't receive    
enough medical treatment if they were injured because of a notification from the shogunate.   
The first section of construction was quickly finished, but some people who lived in a village
running the Saku river ( Hashima City ) didn't  think it was necessarily good work ( because  
the Kiso river flowed into the west low part of the Nagara river ). Also it sometimes         
happened that people who got a secret order from the shogunate destroyed the finished banks.  
     This construction was not one just to form Saruo. When the village headmen who           
watched a process of this construction with a help of Satsuma thought that it would be        
finished soon, villages were combined together and they negotiated with a daikan and a        
mizu-bugyo ( officials of the shogunate ). Then headmen had officials include their rice field
works in the construction. That is the present Koyabu Kuwabara Town Hashima City ( the farms  
about 64 ha ). Although Satsuma Hanshi came here for flood control, all of them               
couldn't understand why they needed to help farming, too. The first thing they couldn't get   
was that power of village headmen who controled peasants in their village was stronger than   
local bugyos', and they were overpowered by their power.                                      




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