- トップページ
- Fantastic Voyagers
- A traditional Japanese well-digging technique is becoming a big success in the 21st century!
A traditional Japanese well-digging technique is becoming a big success in the 21st century!
How do you dig a well?
A simple technique for digging wells that was devised in 19th century Japan is now gaining international attention in areas troubled by water shortages.
One of our most basic needs, something we cannot live without, is water. Take away the Internet and our mobile phones and we’ll still be fine, but we won’t last very long without water. It is no coincidence that all the great ancient civilizations were developed along rivers. A steady water supply is one of the prerequisites. On the other hand, in areas where water is hard to come by or the supply is irregular, existence itself is threatened.
There are still many regions in Asia and Africa that are plagued by chronic water shortages. People have to walk several miles every day from their villages to the nearest spring or stream to fetch water for their daily needs.
The NGO “International Water Project” (IWP) is a group of volunteers who dig water wells in such areas of Asia and Africa. Not only do they dig wells, they also teach the skills of well-boring to the local people with the aim of spreading this important technique as far and wide as possible. Instead of depending on specialized construction machinery, these skills require only local materials and manpower to dig deep wells. The well-boring method that IWP is promoting is an old Japanese system called “kazusa-bori.”
Kazusa-bori is a technique that was invented in the 1870s in the Kazusa area (in what is now Chiba Prefecture) and uses ordinary materials such as an iron pipe, bamboo and wood. A scaffold is built at the intended spot, and then the hole is dug by thrusting the iron pipe into the ground. The iron pipe, which gets filled with dug-up earth and sand, is then pulled back up using elastic bamboo sticks. This simple method makes it possible to dig deep wells in an efficient way, and a group of only three or four people can dig a water well with a depth of several hundred meters. Amazingly, no electricity or gasoline is required whatsoever.
The power of kazusa-bori is thoroughly established. In the late 19th century, this method was popular all over Japan, and it was even used to drill for hot springs in Atami and Beppu and to bore the Akita oil fields.
IWP has improved on the traditional kazusa-bori system, and their new “Ohno method” is even simpler and relies only on locally available materials. It is very moving to see how a traditional technique born out of the collective wisdom of Japan’s well-boring craftsmen 140 years ago is now being used to resolve water shortages in Asia and Africa.
