Evaluation of the Traditional Japanese River Environment Using the Know-how of YARIMIZU

Abstract

Recently, the public has become more and more concern of the recovery of a natural environment. Toward this goal, improvement of existing river environments and the building of new rivers and streams in parks have been going on increasing numbers. Traditional Japanese gardens have had man-made streams-or YARIMIZU, as they are called-for centuries. However, there is not much scientific literature dealing with YARIMIZU, and there are no studies that we know of evaluating YARIMIZU from a hydraulical viewpoint. The authors are interested in evaluating the river environment of YARIMIZU to gain a better understanding of the ancient Japanese gardening methods in terms of up-dated hydraulical knowledge.