The Horikawa River and Citizens of Nagoya City
⇒Abstract of Horikawa Sen-nin Chosatai 2010
⇒Report from the first survey meeting
⇒Report from the second survey meeting
⇒Report from the third survey meeting
⇒Report from the fourth survey meeting
⇒Report from the fifth survey meeting
⇒Report from the sixth survey meeting
⇒Report from the seventh survey meeting
⇒Report from the eighth survey meeting
⇒Report from the nineth survey meeting NEW！

Nagoya City, located in the center of Japan, developed around Nagoya Castle, which was constructed nearly 400 years ago by the famous shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa. There is an artificial river in this city, which originally had the vital role of transporting supplies to the city, and has since contributed greatly to the industrial development of Nagoya. The river is called "Horikawa", and its full length is 16.2km, with a basin area of 51.9km². But high and low tides strongly impact the quality of the river, and the water stagnates easily because there is no particular source of the river other than reclaimed water from sewage treatment plants.

The Horikawa once had a close connection to the lives of the people, but the original function of the river was lost with the development of the city, and relations between people and the Horikawa became poor. The citizens came to abandon the Horikawa out of disgust with the water; stagnant, foul-smelling, and choked with sludge.

In recent years, citizens have begun to try improving this situation. They carried out a signature collection campaign, and held a symposium to raise support for the Horikawa’s purification. These appeals from citizens’ groups spread little by little as they strove to make the Horikawa river flow clear again. The administration took note of such civic voices, and pushed forward an action plan for the Horikawa’s purification.

Horikawa River Thousand-Citizen Survey Groups
　In 2004, citizens formed the "Horikawa Sen-nin Chosatai''. The name means 　"Horikawa River Thousand-Citizen Survey Groups''. The Horikawa Sen-nin Chosatai (HSC) consists of many volunteer groups of citizens, e.g. co-workers in the same office, university students, children on a football team, or even a single person.

The Nagoya City government and the Nagoya Horikawa Lions Club planned and administered the second survey phase of HSC 2005 as a collaborative effort, in that the administration stimulated a new Horikawa purification measure based on the results from the first survey phase of HSC, and then evaluated it from the citizens’ point of view.Citizens’ hopes and expectations for the Horikawa’s purification grew ever stronger.

The administration spent a long time coordinating "Clean Water Transmission to the Horikawa River from the Kiso River" with the authorities concerned before it could finally be realized. From 2007, in the third survey phase of HSC, each group is helping to inspect and evaluate the progress of this social experiment. The survey programs have been expanded to increase the number of participants, so that they have secured the participation of more than 3,000 citizens already.