The Real Development (p. 93)
 

There is no room to doubt the fact that nature has blessed the Tomatoh district. As the progress through the preceding paragraphs makes clear, it was after the Tokugawa and Meiji periods that allowed it to be ruined. It's extremely ironic, but it was Tomatoh's very "development" which made it completely "barren." It was not development, but more like plunder. What can be called true development is remaking nature's abundance as something human, and raising nature's power in a form [useful] for humans. Completely plundering it is simply killing nature's abundance. Tomatoh was not originally "barren," and since there has not been a major change yet in the world's climate, if we employ a method which fits the land, it is natural that we can raise a rich Tomatoh once again. Is that not the very meaning of real development? Let us diagnose what became of Tomatoh after it was made "barren", from the point in time of 5 years ago, when the buy-out rumors were going around.
 

According to professor Hiroshi Sasaki (regional economics) of Sapporo Junior College, in Sourai-machi's case, the result of farmer's efforts from the Taisho period -- using volcanic soil for fine dairy land breeding (taking the best cattle to another pasture to use as a supply pasture) -- made it grow. Atsuma-machi, including every corner of Tomakomai City, was the first area in Hokkaido to have rice paddies producing fine quality rice, but this too was due to careful attention from the Taisho period. These areas were the so-called "existing farm families" agricultural lands.

p.94

Within Tomatoh, rather than these areas, the there was wilderness in the beaches, left "barren" as they were. If compared with the aforementioned areas, being close to the sea and swampy were bad conditions. People settled there and began land reclamation, they were mainly land reclamation farmers salvaging [land] after the war. In the years after the war from1946 or 47 to 1955, people from various districts and various occupations came. Of the many examples trying agriculture for the first time, many cultivated completely virgin land. They started not with thick walls like those of Kayabuki -- traditional Ainu sechi (houses) -- but with insubstantial huts not only without electricity, but without the other fundamentals of daily life either. Every household had its own history of suffering. Novelist Mr. Takeshi Hirataka's work "The Descendants of Robinson" paints a picture of the truth of the air raid dispersal settlements just before the post-war settlements, but just like the salvagers' settlements, they suffered under a miserable government policy which ignored them.
 

Thus, post-war settlers had been trying the reclamation part of development for at least 15 years and at most 24 or 25 years.

p.95 This is real development. Fine grass was finally able to be harvested.
 

However, being developed in that way and improving economically are different questions. Many reclamation farming families took on the burden of its cost. Agricultural cooperatives, created for the purpose of farmers' self-defense, soon became indistinguishable from banks, helping rich farmers and ill-treated poor peasants. More fundamentally, there was an agricultural administration, nousei, often called "NO"-sei. In accordance with the same tendency of agricultural management to become more distressing was the throughout Japan, it appeared particularly harsh for the weak section of the reclamation farm families. The farmers, burdened with repayment and impossible fees, fled in the night in the worst cases and sometimes gave up farming, selling their land at ridiculously low prices. In other words, the workers were given no choice but to hand over the arduously developed farmland.
 

This phenomenon was by no means the "NO"-sei. The labor force that gave up its farms and the farmers working away from home were used as the key labor force in automobile factories, expressway construction, and bullet train line construction, for advancing new progress. Blacks and immigrants comprise an essential portion of the American labor force. Western Europe had success in its enormous foreign labor. Japan, without blacks or immigrants, has farmers serve the same role. They could also be seen as manipulated by the agricultural administration, which extremely cleverly calculated depopulation.
 

In that sense, a family's mainstay of working for the better part of a year in a strange land was, in the Tokugawa period, closely resembling the Ainu, who were requisitioned by government employees. As the Ainu society was destroyed by government employees, the society of the agricultural community was destroyed through working away from home. Both were for "development."
 

Both the reclamation farmers that narrowly avoided giving up the farm and the existing farm families of Tomatoh, due to this kind of economic background, varying in degree, lost (were made to lose) hope, for the most part.

p. 96
The bribery problem presented itself at the time of the autumn of 1967.
 

Fishermen and "Compensation" (p. 123)
 

Following the farmers whose land was directly snatched away through the "Tomatoh" Plan, those whose way of life and place of production were similarly snatched away were the fishermen.
 

However, here I have no choice but to expose here the "private ownership" of beaches, the problem that shakes the basis of business and the country. For example, in Mississippi, U.S., the meandering beaches of the Gulf of Mexico region are perfect for swimming and fishing, but are almost all divided among the rich and privately owned, made into beachfront villas. Here, the "gorgeous mansion" hedge running parallel to the beach extends to the beach and connects to the sea. Ordinary citizens are prohibited from entering.
 

The Ishikari Gulf vacation spot in the Ishikari Lowlands, on the opposite side from Tomakomai (the Sea of Japan side), has long been a place to rest, according to the people of Sapporo and Otaru. It was smashed through the "New Ishikari Port" Plan, but as for public beaches, it has only become the object of "compensation" for the fishermen.

p.124

However, "speaking of that compensation money, it was made only a portion of fishermen's specific hopes of earnings, and it is not tied to the loss to future generations' of the fishing resources. In addition, it is not just that the beach was originally something that belonged only to the fishermen. It should be a place primarily for the children, but also a place where all people can come to relax. Nevertheless, without any sort of consultation with (Sapporo's, Otaru's, and others') citizens, only a concern for company profit" (ëAsahi Journal' Apr. 26 1974 issue, Kihara, Atsuyoshi "The Coastline and its Inhabitants"), the public treasure of beaches was snatched away. In North America, the formula of the aborigines (Indians) having their land snatched away by having the Washington government's own puppet chief of another tribe sign a treaty, effecting the purchase of another tribe's huge area of land, was a means of driving out the aborigines.
 

In "Tomatoh," the exact same thing is advancing. The ones doing direct relations are the Three Fishing Industries Joint Association of Tomakomai, Hama'atsuma, and Mukawa, but the point getting tangled with the Monbetsu Fishing Cooperative and Sarugawa industrial water irrigation problem is also a serious influence.

p. 125

When thinking about Toyoura and others' quarries (refer to "The Main Characters of Development") high volume of ship navigation, the influence extends to all Pacific fishermen from Funkawan (Uchiurawan) to Erimomisaki. So, that beach and sea is by no means something that only belongs to the fishermen.
 

But let us recall the aforementioned North American example. In the way of the Washington government, the Hokkaido authorities concerned made public beaches private industrial housing complexes and bought them. As that "puppet aborigine portion," they made a treaty so that only their side of the compensation money was paid, but this April Tomakomai Fishing Cooperative made a whole-house agreement to "accept compensation negotiations." Mukawa Fishing Cooperative also answered the corruption in the condition of the harbor construction. They were asking Ryou Fishing Cooperative's councilor or managing director about what he thinks about the sea as a public place.

..........But that will make the beach the exclusive right of the fishermen...

"That's how it will turn out, won't it?" (Mukawa Fishing Cooperative Managing Director)
"We're thinking about the rights of the fishing industry." (Tomakomai Fishing Cooperative Councilor)

..........But just by compensations to the fishing industry, the enterprise side will occupy all the beaches. From Muroran, the west coast is already heading that way. Normal citizens cannot even enter.

"I didn't think about it that much." (same)

Hama'atsuma's fishing cooperative, agreed to be located at the base of Tomatoh's very long bank, is still doing its best. As Tomakomai Fishing Cooperative is being criticized for "fishing facing the shore," with a non-committal attitude from the beginning, and regarding the great number of people that oppose the goal of the lifting of the compensation money, the Hama'atsuma Fishing Cooperative has carried a posture of strong refusal. Within that background, especially concerning hokki shellfish and scallops, they have been raised on fishery and distribution methods which deeply considered resource protection rationally and result in a stable income.
 

According to Councilor Aratamura, as "compensation" of the fishing locations, in addition to 1,110,000,000 yen, they built a harbor for a breakwater base, they financed the upsizing of fishing boats, and one after another brought about "good conditions" (Indian treaties were the same way). The coastal land's value went up absurdly. If negotiations are accepted in this way, this kind of compensation will be seen as the best movement of money in history. Before this "modern shochu spirits," whether Hama'atsuma would be seen through to the end was the object of surrounding concern. If it submitted, all of Tomatoh's beaches would be privatized by private enterprises like in Mississippi. To the Ainu people, for whom it was a place where their ancestors could freely fish, as well as for ordinary citizens related to the sea in any way, it happened without their permission.