Viewpoints of Ueno Hidesaburō in "Lecture of Land Consolidation"

Abstract

Ueno Hidesaburō's "Lecture of Land Consolidation" is highly regarded as the book that established agricultural engineering in the Japanese academic field. However, the methodology adopted in the book has been negatively evaluated as notional. Furthermore, Ueno aimed at the realization of agricultural land form according to the development of the associated farming methods. This important aspect of Ueno's work is often overlooked, and the evaluation of his work has thus become one-sided. Hence, in this paper, the author reevaluate Ueno's book based on his perspective, and describe his technical viewpoints. The author believe that if the said book is considered as a planning guideline for land remediation based on technical principles, it can offer novel perspectives regarding future agricultural engineering. Furthermore, in this paper the author clarify that Ueno did not have a broad perspective of engineering concepts and did not respond to technological development such as replotting of agricultural land and agricultural tool improvement necessary for realization of appropriate agricultural land forms, which could have influenced the conservativeness of subsequent agricultural engineering.