How Hindi got caught in Karnataka’s linguistic crossfire

The attitude of Hindi speakers in Bengaluru is the problem, not the language. Yes, it's as simple as that. Do feel at home. And make cities you move into your home. Vote, segregate waste, keep your surroundings clean, respect the locals and culture, and at least make an attempt to learn the local language. Is that asking for too much? Read what KS Dakshina Murthy, an independent journalist, has to say on YKA: 

Hindi is not the issue. Yet it is Hindi which is the issue. This seemingly contradictory view holds within it the crux of the frothing anti-Hindi sentiment that has taken cosmopolitan Bengaluru by surprise.

It’s not for nothing that Bengaluru is equated with cosmopolitanism – it is among the friendliest cities on the planet where any language is understood, accommodated and appreciated. The local language, Kannada, is forever giving way to make space for Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi, Bengali and so many more.

You will find that plumbers, newspaper delivery boys, milkmen, auto drivers talk English, Kannada, Hindi, just about any language. This always surprises outsiders who have made Bengaluru their home. Hindi movies have routinely run for weeks in local theatres (for many years now) and several local FM stations cater exclusively to Hindi film music. Versions of North Indian cuisine (even if not traditional in taste) can be found in any part of the city.

It’s Not the Language, It’s the Attitude
So, it is not Hindi as a language or even in popular culture that is the problem. The red rag is the perceived attitude of the Hindi-speaking population. Yes, Kannadigas have a reputation for being accommodating and all that, but that does not mean there is no need to learn their language even after years of staying in Bengaluru. There are innumerable anecdotal evidences of people living in the city for decades and still unable to speak the language, leave alone read or write in it.

Many among Hindi speakers feel that the locals need to learn what they believe is the “national language”. A senior editor of an English daily recounted an instance in a vegetable market – a Hindi-speaking woman was haggling with a vendor. Unable to figure out what the vendor was saying, she burst out with righteous indignation, demanding that she learn Hindi. At this, the editor who could no longer control himself, turned to the woman and said, “Ma’am, you are in her state. You should learn Kannada, not ask her to learn Hindi”.

This, in some ways, captures what can be kindly termed the insensitive attitude of outsiders who choose to make Bengaluru home but do not attempt to learn the local language.

Chauvinism Begets a Counter-Culture
If cosmopolitanism is one side of the coin, the flip side is the rigid culture of identity of outsiders who choose not to integrate. This is a particularly sore point among locals who feel threatened and fear, rationally or not, that if the trend continues, Kannada will lose its pole position in Karnataka.

Feeding on this fear are several pro-Kannada organisations, which don’t hesitate to use violence to resist what they see as “invasion” of their territory. Though the chauvinist groups do not have a huge overt following, they are treated with kid gloves, as they seem to articulate a sentiment subsisting within the larger Kannada-speaking middle class.

Moreover, in these times, when most people travel extensively across the country they see the domination of other languages in their respective states – Hindi in Uttar Pradesh, Bengali in Bengal, Tamil in Tamil Nadu etc. This experience has, in recent decades, added to the widespread feeling in Karnataka that Kannada is not getting its due in its home state.

The opposition to the inclusion of Hindi signboards on Bengaluru’s Namma Metro network is therefore an example of resistance to a kind of linguistic imperialism rather than any hostility to the language itself. This differentiation is important, as the hostility to the Modi government-engineered imposition of Hindi has rarely crossed the line to threaten people speaking Hindi.

That even Karnataka’s Chief Minister Siddaramaiah thought it necessary to intervene – with his government asking Metro officials to explain the inclusion of Hindi in their signage – is clearly a reflection of deep-felt angst over what the future holds for Kannada’s survival as a language. This anxiety may be overstated, but the fact is that the sentiment is real with serious consequences if ignored.

Another reason for the rise in anti-Hindi sentiment is that the BJP government at the Centre is overactive in pushing Hindi into non-Hindi speaking states. Not only is the Centre doing a huge disservice to Hindi language and culture by doing this, it could also create previously non-existent social schisms and deepen existing faultlines.

Designing a megacity for mental health

A new report assesses how Tokyo’s infrastructure affects residents’ emotional well-being, offering lessons for other cities.

The Tokyo-based psychiatrist Layla McCay says that though the prevalence of mental illness in Japan is comparable to other countries, people don’t talk about it much. “There can be more of a stigma associated with it than in the West,” she says. Only one in five people in Japan with mental illness seek help, while in the United States, that figure is at least one in two.

Though the Japanese may not discuss mental health as Westerners do, they are still concerned about it. “Urban policymakers in Japan often talk about the problem of stress and how to alleviate it,” McCay says. One example, karoshi, or “death from overwork,” often by stroke, heart attack, or suicide, is associated with high levels of stress. (Japan’s suicide rate is the fifth-highest in the world.) And hikkikomori are young people who withdraw from society and do not leave their homes for six months or more—a condition often triggered by high anxiety in response to pressure to succeed in school or work.

The Center for Urban Design and Mental Health, which McCay founded in 2015, recommends that cities incorporate four main themes into urban design to support mental health: green spaces, active spaces, social spaces, and safe spaces. For the past year, McCay has been conducting research on how Tokyo’s design fares.

“On [Tokyo’s] side streets, it can feel like you’re walking through a park.”
McCay interviewed Tokyo-based public health specialists, academics, mental health specialists, urban planners, developers, and architects, and published the results of her findings in the center’s journal this month. She found a number of elements that promote mental health in the Asian megacity that metropolises across the globe might consider imitating.

Japanese government officials and planners tend to approach urban design with a view toward improving physical health rather than mental well-being, says McCay. But, she says, through this work, as well as a concern about stress, they are nevertheless creating public spaces, such as parks and walkable areas, that also shore up residents’ emotional well-being. “Thanks to their focus on greenery, walkability, and beauty, many of the spaces designed to help improve physical health exert similarly positive effects for mental health problems like anxiety and depression,” she says.

One such initiative involves empowering citizens to create small green spaces all over the city. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government offers workshops that teach residents how to create green rooftops, wall surfaces, railroad areas, and parking lots, and offers tax incentives for such efforts. In addition, the 2003 Ordinance on the Promotion of Stylish Townscape Creation established a program in which Tokyo residents work with professional designers to plant and tend to greenery next to their property, spurring many to line the roads outside their homes with potted plants. “On these side streets,” says McCay, “it can feel like you’re walking through a park.”

In addition, these small roads have little traffic, which allows for a profusion of such greenery—and for pedestrians to dominate. McCay notes that Tokyo has managed to keep its cars and buses mostly to its main streets, so that just a block or two off the principal thoroughfares are tranquil, leafy areas conducive to walking, running errands in small shops, and social interaction. The layout is similar to Barcelona’s superblocks, but emerged more organically, largely as a result of the ubiquity and efficiency of Tokyo’s public transport, which is also mainly accessible via the busiest roads. Residents walk to and from bus and subway stops and eschew cars; the city’s automobile ownership rate is only .46 per household—similar to New York City.

The Japanese government also encourages its urban residents to partake in shinrin yoku, which literally means “taking in the forest atmosphere.” According to the report, this practice is “an opportunity for city dwellers to spend leisurely time in the forest without any distractions.” Tokyo has five official shinrin yoku trails west of the city that are easily accessible by train. Some companies include visits to them in their employee health plan.

“Even if societies think differently about mental health, the challenges are the same.”
McCay also found room for improvement. As Tokyo’s denizens spend a lot of time inside—in offices, but also shopping malls—the report encourages efforts to bring more greenery and light to these spaces. “Interviewees spoke about the need to maintain office workers’ circadian rhythms through exposure to light,” says McCay. “These questions are increasingly being posed in Tokyo as workplace stress is often in the news.”

McCay’s center is now looking into other cities’ track records, and the next will be Hong Kong. The center is also driving similar research for cities including Wroclaw, Poland; Montreal; and Morristown, New Jersey, and invites other researchers to contribute studies of their own cities.

“This is the first step in a process in which cities around the world learn from each other about urban design and mental health,” says McCay. “Even if societies think differently about mental health, the challenges are the same and the people are the same. We can all teach each other.”

(Source: CityLab)

The US is running out of nurses

The country has experienced nursing shortages for decades, but an aging population means the problem is about to get much worse, writes Rebecca Grant on the Atlantic. Read on: 

Five years ago, my mother was rushed to the hospital for an aneurysm. For the next two weeks, my family and I sat huddled around her bed in the intensive-care unit, oscillating between panic, fear, uncertainty, and exhaustion.

It was nurses that got us through that time with our sanity intact. Nurses checked on my mother—and us—multiple times an hour. They ran tests, updated charts, and changed IVs; they made us laugh, allayed our concerns, and thought about our comfort. The doctors came in every now and then, but the calm dedication of the nurses was what kept us together. Without them, we would have fallen apart.

Which is just one reason why the prospect of a national nursing shortage is so alarming. The U.S. has been dealing with a nursing deficit of varying degrees for decades, but today—due to an aging population, the rising incidence of chronic disease, an aging nursing workforce, and the limited capacity of nursing schools—this shortage is on the cusp of becoming a crisis, one with worrying implications for patients and health-care providers alike.


America’s 3 million nurses make up the largest segment of the health-care workforce in the U.S., and nursing is currently one of the fastest-growing occupations in the country. Despite that growth, demand is outpacing supply. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.2 million vacancies will emerge for registered nurses between 2014 and 2022.* By 2025, the shortfall is expected to be “more than twice as large as any nurse shortage experienced since the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s,” a team of Vanderbilt University nursing researchers wrote in a 2009 paper on the issue.

The primary driving force in this looming crisis is the aging of the Baby Boomer generation: Today, there are more Americans over the age of 65 than at any other time in U.S. history. Between 2010 and 2030, the population of senior citizens will increase by 75 percent to 69 million, meaning one in five Americans will be a senior citizen; in 2050, an estimated 88.5 million people in the U.S. will be aged 65 and older.

And as the population ages, demand for health-care services will soar. About 80 percent of older adults have at least one chronic condition, and 68 percent have at least two, according to the National Council on Aging. A USA Today analysis of Medicare data revealed that two-thirds of traditional Medicare beneficiaries older than 65 have multiple chronic conditions, a number that will only continue to climb.

“The aging population and chronic disease are creating the perfect storm driving demand for nurses.”
“People with chronic diseases clearly use more health-care services, and people who are older have more chronic disease,” said Julie Sochalski, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. “The aging population and chronic disease are creating the perfect storm driving demand for nurses.”

But swelling demand is only part of the problem. Like the patients they serve, the country’s nurses are also aging. Around a million registered nurses (RNs) are currently older than 50, meaning one-third of the current nursing workforce will reach retirement age in the next 10 to 15 years. Nearly 700,000 nurses are projected to retire or leave the labor force by 2024.*

“The biggest cohort of registered nurses joined the workforce before the 1970s,” when career choices for women were more limited, said Pam Cipriano, the president of the American Nurses Association (nursing is still overwhelmingly female). As a result, the field now skews older.

“Many nurses held off retiring during the downturn in the economy, she added, “but now the retirements are starting.”

Filling the vacancies left by retiring nurses isn’t a simple one-for-one proposition.
But filling the vacancies left by retiring nurses isn’t a simple one-for-one proposition. Nearly 155,000 new nursing graduates entered the workforce in 2015.* While the number of new nursing students and graduates is growing, the nursing-education system hasn’t kept pace, effectively creating a bottleneck in which only so many aspiring nurses can access the training they need. According to an American Association of Colleges of Nursing report, “U.S. nursing schools turned away 79,659 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2012 due to insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, and budget constraints.” Once again, aging is a factor: Many nursing faculty members are approaching retirement, but without them, nursing schools can’t expand their cohorts.

“As those numbers [of nurse educators] drop, schools have to maintain critical student- to-teacher ratios,” Cipriano said. “Preparation for most nurse faculty is a doctoral degree, and you can’t just replace someone in that position. The trajectory of timeline to fill jobs that nurse faculty are retiring from is much longer.”

In many areas, the barrier to entry isn’t nursing school, but the training that comes afterwards. Sochalski said that where she works in Philadelphia, there are a handful of nursing schools, but a limited number of hospitals and clinics, meaning a limited number of clinical places where fledgling nurses can gain practical experience.

Many health-care providers also shy away from recruiting these newer nurses, Cipriano explained. “When we think about nurses replacing retiring nurses, there is an experience gap,” she said. “People like me who have 40 years of experience will be replaced by individuals with three to five years of experience. Employers need to focus on the fact that they have a responsibility and a burden to ensure that new nurses can maintain expertise and wisdom at a patient's side.”

* * *

It seems as though every expert, group, or academic study has a different take on just how dire the nursing shortage will become. Ed Salsberg, a researcher at the George Washington University School of Nursing who studies nursing-workforce issues, said the country’s evolving health-care system is one variable that may affect projections.

“The health-care delivery system has put in a lot of effort to make the system more efficient and effective, to reduce unnecessary use of health-care services and reduce hospital readmissions,” Salsburg said. “We don’t know for sure whether this is going to increase or decrease demand for nurses. It’s one of the big questions as we look towards the future.” Thus far, he explained, the Affordable Care Act has not contributed significantly to the rising demand for nursing services, because most people newly insured under the ACA skew young and healthy.

To Salsburg, America is not facing a national nursing shortage so much as grappling with a “problem of distribution”—some health-care markets in the U.S. have a plentiful supply of nurses, with other regions feeling the scarcity more acutely.

“Lo and behold, for the past 20 to 30 years, California has only produced 50 percent of the nurses it needed.”

In a 2012 paper titled “United States Registered Nurse Workforce Report Card and Shortage Forecast,” researchers forecasted RN job shortages in each state and assigned a letter grade accordingly. They predicted that the number of states meeting the criteria for a “D” or “F” will increase from five in 2009 to 30 by 2030. All 12 states projected to receive an F are in the South and the West: Florida, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Vernon Lin, one of the authors of this study and a professor at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, said he has experienced the nursing shortage throughout his career, across states and healthcare systems.

“When I was working in Long Beach, we had over 20 nursing vacancies at any one time. And this was in sunny southern California, close to the beach, for a job with federal-government benefits,” Lin said. “I began to look into the situation and, lo and behold, for the past 20 to 30 years, California has only produced 50 percent of the nurses it needed.”

A nurse checks on an infant in the neonatal intensive-care unit of the Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami. 

Like unhappy families, each shortage pocket is unique. In states like Florida and Arizona, the aging population is the real culprit; in other states, the gap is largely due to a limited number of nurse-education opportunities. Lin said that nursing supply is “mostly local,” meaning nurses tend to stay in the same markets where they go to school. Fewer schools means fewer nurses. Unsurprisingly, rural and poorer areas have a harder time recruiting nurses than urban magnet hospitals, which can offer higher-paying jobs and lifestyle perks.

The Rapid City Regional Hospital in South Dakota recently began closing beds due to a shortage of experienced RNs. Lori Wightman, the newly hired chief of nursing for the Regional Health System, said the number of closed beds at RCRH adjusts day to day, based on the number of nurses available for each shift.

“Closing beds really is a last resort,” Wightman said. “The first thing we have to consider is patient safety. There are standards of practice for what nurse-to-patient ratios should be.”

Those standards can represent the difference between life and death. When nurses are stretched too thin, they have less time and energy to devote to each patient. Overworking leads to fatigue and burnout, which threatens the quality of care and increases the incidence of error. Past research has found links between insufficient nursing staffing and higher rates of hospital readmission and patient mortality. Higher patient loads are also linked to higher rates of nurse turnover, which can costly, disruptive, and potentially harmful to patient safety. Conversely, more and happier nurses can mean better care and better outcomes.

When facing a nursing shortage, hospitals have a handful of options beyond closing beds.
When facing a nursing shortage, hospitals have a handful of options beyond closing beds. They can ask their nurses to work more hours or offer financial incentives for those who pick up extra shifts, though for the reasons outlined above, this may not be a safe option. Many hospitals offer financial incentives to nurses who work additional shifts. Some companies also rely on temporary “travel nurses” who typically work for around 13 weeks at a time, but they come at a premium.


“Now nurses can move all over the country because of demand, and our job is to show them what a great place [South Dakota] is to work,” Wightman said.

Beyond a good salary, strong cultural fit, flexible hours, and manageable expectations, Wightman said nurses also want to work in places where they can practice to the full scope of their license. Each state has different guidelines for what each type of license allows a nurse to do. For example, nurse practitioners are more limited in in South Dakota than in some neighboring states, and may choose not to take a job in South Dakota as a result. Wightman said national licensure for nurses, Wightman believes, would make it easier to address deficits.

Another long-term strategy is to open up the paths to a degree. In the Institute of Medicine’s “The Future of Nursing” report, the authors recommended that nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training, and called for the proportion of nurses with baccalaureate degrees to increase to 80 percent by 2020. While it would seem that more highly educated nurses is something to strive for, Salsburg said this could potentially exacerbate shortages. Many aspiring nurses, particularly those in rural and poorer areas,  enter the field with an associate's degree and pursue an advanced degree later. Given that nurses tend to stay local, providing viable educational opportunities in these communities is key.

Other strategies to address the nursing shortage include incentives for nurses to become nurse educators.
“We don't want to cut off access to education in rural communities where, in many cases, an associate's degree in nursing is the only local nursing education opportunity,” Salsburg said. “The associate’s degree has to be seen as a pathway to nursing.”

Other strategies to address the nursing shortage have included public-private partnerships and incentives for nurses to become nurse educators. Johnson & Johnson recently launched the Campaign for Nursing’s Future, an effort that uses TV commercials, videos, a website, and brochures to tout the benefits of “this rich and rewarding career.” And two years ago, the University of Wisconsin (UW) announced the $3.2 million initiative to provide fellowships and loan forgiveness for nurses who agree to teach in the state after graduation from nursing school.

Cipriano said the American Nurses Association is currently lobbying Congress to increase funding for Title VIII of the Public Health Service Act. The provision allots federal grants for nursing schools and organizations to advance their educational programs, promote diversity in the field, repay loans for nursing students who work in facilities with critical shortages, train geriatric nurses, and more.

“We saw this money reduced by $2.15 million this year, and when you adjust for inflation, we’ve seen a 30 percent decline in that money since 1971,” she said. “To maintain our supply and the pipeline, Title VIII is critical.” But even as the threat of a more severe shortage looms, an increase in funding remains uncertain. The only certainty, in fact, is this: There will always be a need for nurses, the medical professionals that make otherwise harrowing experiences bearable for patients and their families.

A few sex-obsessed babas India could definitely do without

One can only feel sorry for the gullible devotees and believers who are exploited by these self-styled 'swamis', says an article on DailyO. Read on: 

Is becoming a self-styled "swami" or a "baba" the best profession in the country? These are the benefits of becoming a "baba" - he becomes popular instantly, has wealth that is not accounted for, has massive political and corporate contacts, has a large fan following in the form of devotees. The attractions go on and on. Besides all these, the babas also indulge in sexual misdemeanours.

One can only feel sorry for the gullible devotees and believers who are exploited by these babas. Many cases of sexual exploitation go unreported owing to the social stigma attached to it and social connections of these so-called saints. However, some of them have come to light after some of the victims mustered courage to spill the beans.

These are five prominent babas who preyed on their innocent believers, but finally law caught up with them:

1. Baba Parmanand

The police in Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, on May 24, confirmed the arrest of this controversial "godman" on charges of sexual exploitation of women. An FIR had been filed against Ram Shankar Tiwari alias Baba Parmanand after several women registered complaints accusing him of sexually exploiting them in the name of treatment for infertility.

The police raided Parmanand's ashram in Barabanki and seized several CDs containing obscene videos of women, vulgar literature and porn movies. Parmanand was arrested from Satna in Madhya Pradesh and brought to Barabanki.

2. Asaram Bapu

Asaram has been in jail in Jodhpur for the past 26 months. He was convicted after being accused of sexually abusing a 16-year-old girl at his Jodhpur ashram even as her mother was waiting outside. He has not only been accused of sexual assault but also rape and molestation. He, along with his son Narayan Sai, are in jail for exploiting women devotees.

3. Sant Rampal

According to reports, Rampal preferred "hostesses" whom he called "sadhikayaen" inside his private mansion. Of them, only a few were allowed to enter his bedroom as his alleged sexual partners.

Babita Kumari alias Baby, 27, was reportedly his most preferred bed-mate. Unconfirmed reports said she used to stay in the room of Rampal's son. The exact nature of her relationship with the Sant's son is not clear.

But her proximity to both the father and son gave her power over Rampal that other hostesses could not exercise. Sources said Rampal had even made a fixed deposit of Rs 10 lakh in her name. The reports also said that Rampal did not allow anybody to enter his room when Babita was with him. They would spend hours together locked inside a closed room. The police also recovered a pregnancy kit from Rampal's room besides medicines for improving vitality.

4. Nithyananda

The 293rd pontiff of the Adheenam Mutt in Bidari on the outskirts of Bangalore was arrested in June 2012 on charges of rape and molestation. After searching the premises of Nithyananda, the police were horrified to find a dump of condoms and "ganja" in the corner of a compound.

The then Karnataka chief minister, DV Sadananda Gowda, ordered the arrest of Nithyananda after several of his followers appeared on a private Kannada TV channel and accused the godman of exploiting them.

Arathi Rao, a follower of Nithyananda, gave a detailed account of her five-year experience with the guru. She alleged that Nithyananda repeatedly raped her and threatened her with dire consequences if she revealed it to anybody. Arathi also claimed that it was she who had secretly filmed Nithyananda's sex tapes with a Tamil actress.

5. Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale

He was also a self-styled godman who preached spirituality while running a prostitution racket. Two air hostesses were among eight people arrested in February 2010 for flesh trade in the capital. The eight, including two men and six women in the age group of 19 to 30 years, were taken into custody near the PVR cinema at Saket in south Delhi while travelling in two cars. They included an air hostess who worked for an Indian carrier and another who was employed by a European airline.

The mastermind was identified as Shiv Murat Dwivedi, 39, alias Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale. Dwivedi, who belonged to Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh, had come to New Delhi in 1988 and worked as a security guard at a five-star hotel in Nehru Place.

He later worked for a massage parlour at Lajpat Nagar. He was arrested for carrying out prostitution 1997 and 1998. Subsequently, he changed his appearance and started calling himself Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale. He was based at a Sai Baba temple in Badarpur and gradually started a flourishing flesh trade racket in the guise of leading a spiritual life. He started holding religious discourses and congregations and even got a video CD titled "Shri Sai Amrit Varsha" released. He constructed a 200-bed hospital and a huge temple in Chitrakoot. The two air hostesses lived in posh areas of south Delhi.

The flight of the wild geese

Wild geese were once a common sight throughout Japan, but overhunting since the late 1800s caused their numbers to decline drastically to just 5,000. Geese migrate to Japan from Siberia, and it was a letter from the Soviet Union that helped them in their time of crisis, writes Ishi Hiroyuki on Nippon.com. Read on: 

One of my indelible childhood memories is from a few years after the end of World War II, when I was a young elementary-school pupil. I had been evacuated during the war, and the Tokyo I came home to was a burned-out wasteland. It was a day in fall. Looking up, I watched a flock of several dozen white-fronted geese fly in tight formation cross the clear blue sky, honking to each other as they went.

White-fronted geese fly over Miyajimanuma. © Miyajimanuma Waterbird and Wetlands Center.

Around me, people cried out in excitement: “It’s a flight of geese!” “Just listen to them!” When I told my mother about it later, she sang me an old lullaby, Sato-gokoro (Longing for Home).

Kari, kari, sao ni nare, saki ni nare . . .
Wild geese, wild geese, fly in line, show me the way home . . .

Geese were not unusual in Tokyo in those days, when their arrival was a yearly event announcing the start of a new season. Since then, though, geese have disappeared from the skies over the capital, although over the last 10 years or so I have once again heard of people in different parts of the country seeing flocks of geese flying in formation.

The Goose Marsh
The Ishikari River winds its way across the center of Ishikari Plain, a lowland area in the west of Hokkaidō. Near the river is Miyajimanuma, a small marshland covering some three hectares. It is early October, and the trees around the marsh are beginning to assume their autumn finery. A squadron of white-fronted geese flies into view. Seen in silhouette, the birds appear to skim the tips of the trees.

Up to several dozen geese move in formation. They fly in file, then form a line that stretches out sideways before changing into a V shape. Like a wave advancing to the shore, the geese bear down on the marsh. Suddenly, the formation breaks up in midair, and like leaves from the trees the geese descend to the surface of the water. They cry out to each other in high-pitched, honking calls.

Bathed in the evening glow, white-fronted geese return to their roosting grounds at Miyajimanuma. (© Nakamura Takashi)

Their arrival is the end of an epic 3,000-kilometer journey from Siberia. Before long, more flocks of geese return from the neighboring paddy fields, where they have been pecking at fallen rice grains.
The whole marshland has come alive with geese, and their clamor is almost deafening. I am reminded of a haiku by Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827). A prolific poet, Issa liked geese so much that he wrote 448 haiku about them. He wrote this particular verse in the town of Sotogahama, on the shore of Mutsu Bay in what is today Aomori Prefecture:

Kyō kara wa
Nihon no kari zo
Raku ni neyo
From this day forth, geese,
You are Japanese.
Now enjoy your rest.

Miyajimanuma was designated a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention in 2002. As well as white-fronted geese, it is visited by many different species of migratory waterfowl, including whooper swans, great white egrets, great crested grebes, and northern shovelers. Miyajimanuma gained its Ramsar designation because it is Japan’s northernmost and largest stopover for migrating white-fronted geese, as well as one of the most important staging sites—places where the birds rest and gather strength during lengthy migrations—anywhere in the world. Here the birds replenish their nutritional reserves before flying on to the Tōhoku or Hokuriku regions of Japan. Some go even farther, ending up dispersed across the countries of Asia.

White-fronted geese at Miyajimanuma. (Photo courtesy of Miyajimanuma Waterbird and Wetlands Center)

Miyajimanuma Waterbird and Wetlands Center and other organizations have surveyed the numbers of white-fronted geese that gather at Miyajimanuma before flying back northward in spring. There were fewer than 500 birds a year from 1975 to 1988, so that even during the migration season there was little activity at the lake. The number had risen to over 40,000 birds by 1997, though, and in 2015 around 80,000 birds arrived to set a new record. From Miyajimanuma, the geese fly over the Sea of Okhotsk to the Kamchatka Peninsula, their staging ground for the final return to their breeding grounds across Siberia.

Geese Throughout Japan
The kanji character for goose (雁), which has been in use since ancient times, can be read as either gan or kari. This does not refer to one specific species, but is a general term for members of the goose family. There are 14 species known worldwide, of which 9, including the white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons), the bean goose (A. fabalis), the cackling goose (Branta hutchinsii), and the brant (B. bernicla), have been recorded in Japan. Some 90% of geese seen in Japan are white-fronted geese; all are winter visitors, arriving in September and staying until March.

The white-fronted goose is mostly dark brown, with greyish tints. In size it is midway between a mallard and a swan. It takes its English name from the white forehead; its name in Chinese, 白额雁 (baieyan), has the same meaning. It has been a familiar bird since ancient times, and appears frequently in Japanese folk tales, poems, literature, and folklore. It was often the subject of paintings on folding screens and was a popular motif in family crests.

The white-fronted goose. A migratory bird, it breeds in places in Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Siberia in the Arctic Circle, and overwinters in temperate zones in Europe, North America, Japan, and other regions. It is the best-known member of the goose family. (Illustration by Izuka Gō)

The white-fronted goose is mentioned in 80 poems in the Man’yōshū, an eighth century anthology of Japanese poetry, and is second only to the little cuckoo. The official records of the Edo shogunate (1603–1867) include details of the shōgun’s hunting—467 geese of different types were taken, greater than the number of cranes or any other birds.

The meat of geese has long been appreciated, and goose bones have even been found in shell heaps from the prehistoric Jōmon period. From the Nara (710–94) and Heian (794–1185) periods onward, goose meat was a luxury enjoyed by the privileged classes of the imperial court and the aristocracy.

The Edo shogunate prohibited eating wild birds for some time, but goose meat still came to be regarded as a special delicacy. Buddhist monks were forbidden to eat meat, and as a substitute they made ganmodoki, literally “pseudo goose.” This deep-fried tofu creation mixed with thinly sliced vegetables is today an essential ingredient in oden, a warming winter hot-pot dish. One theory is that ganmodoki was made to taste like goose, an indication of how highly goose meat was regarded.

In 1734, the eighth shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshimune, ordered the herbologist Niwa Shōhaku to conduct an exhaustive survey of animals, plants, and minerals across the whole country. The results of the survey were compiled in the Kyōhō-Genbun shokoku sanbutsuchō shūsei (Kyōhō-Genbun Registry of Productions of the Provinces). The original manuscript no longer survives, but the agricultural historian Yasuda Ken re-created the contents using copies that still remained in the feudal domains and other regions. His work gives us an insight into the distribution of wild plants and animals across the country at the time, letting us imagine the richness of the wildlife in Edo-period Japan.

The re-created production registry covers about 40% of the Japanese archipelago, and the plants and animals reported from the feudal domains and the shōgun’s lands were meticulously recorded, together with illustrations. For example, the cockroach (gokiburi in standard Japanese) was reported from the Satsuma Domain under the local name of amame. The records show that wolves roamed across areas from Tōhoku to Kyūshū, and that the Japanese otter, which is now extinct, was found throughout the country.

With the exception of some regions where the production registry did not survive, the records show that geese were found across practically the whole country. They were commonplace birds that could be seen anywhere.

Utagawa Hiroshige, “Full Moon at Takanawa,” from the Famous Views of the Eastern Capital series. (In the collection of the Ōta Memorial Museum of Art)

The novel Gan (trans. The Wild Goose) by Mori Ōgai (1862–1922) is set in the vicinity of the Hongō neighborhood of Tokyo’s Ueno district. First serialized in 1911–13, it tells the story of a fleeting love between the protagonist, a medical student at the University of Tokyo, and a beautiful woman forced to become the mistress of a moneylender to provide for her impoverished parents. In the story, the main character tosses a stone into Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park, accidentally hitting a goose and killing it. In writing of the birds moving to and fro across the surface of the pond, Ōgai tells us that white-fronted geese lived in the very center of the capital a hundred years ago.

A Bad Time for the Birds
From the start of the Meiji period (1868–1912), geese began to suffer. They had previously been hunted with nets and traps, but the ban on shooting geese was lifted and they were hunted relentlessly. Forestry Agency hunting statistics include records of goose hunting in every prefecture except Hiroshima, Kōchi, and Miyazaki until 1962. From 1967, mainly in western Japan, the number of geese taken began to decline precipitously. According to an inventory of goose habitats in Japan edited by Miyabayashi Yoshihiko and published by the Japanese Association for Wild Geese Protection, there were some 60,000 migratory geese a year in Japan during the 1940s, but this fell to approximately 5,000 by 1970. In addition, there had previously been 150 wintering grounds, but this number shrank drastically to 25.

The disappearance of white-fronted geese from locations across the country went hand-in-hand with Japan’s rapid economic growth from the latter half of the 1950s to the 1960s. Wetlands and marshes were reclaimed to make space for industrial areas, while wintering grounds were lost when levee protection projects were carried out and land was cleared for residential areas or golf courses. Some 60% of the nation’s wetlands are believed to have been lost over the past 100 years. Geese were driven to the paddy field belts of the Tōhoku region and along the Japan Sea coast, where lack of space meant they were forced to live in overcrowded conditions.

This led to an incident that took place in 1973. Dr. Yamashina Yoshimaro, head of the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, showed me a letter he had received from the Soviet Academy of Sciences. This letter pointed out that birds migrating from Siberia to North America, Europe, or the Middle East returned to Siberia every year in roughly the same numbers. However, when birds migrated to Japan, or migrated further south via Japan, very few returned. Why, the letter demanded to know, was this?

Dr. Yamashina was very unhappy about the plight of migratory birds. He said there are a great many migratory birds in the Japanese archipelago, and many of them fly between Japan and Asia, Russia, North America, Australia, and other regions. No one in Japan seemed to accept that migratory birds did not just belong to this country, but were a matter of international concern.

However, Diet member Katō Shizue heard Dr. Yamashina’s complaint. She read the letter out at a meeting of the Lower House Foreign Affairs Committee in April 1974, grilling the representative of the Environment Agency (now the Ministry of the Environment) over migratory birds. The stenographic record of the meeting gives a rather flustered response from the agency official, who admitted that while Japan had achieved enormous economic advances over the preceding years, it was perhaps true that sufficient consideration may not have been given to such matters. The Environment Agency thereafter committed itself to the conservation of migratory birds. This was a memorable meeting—the National Diet had finally gotten serious about conservation.