Page 186 - Changing Living Spaces

Noriko Yuzawa

Table 2 Law and Policy Concerning Disposal of Human Waste
Year Event
1900 "Dirt cleaning law" established. However, excluding human waste.
1910 Amendment of waste cleaning law. By doing this, it is decided to process waste sewage
if necessary for each area.
♦Applied to Aichi prefecture governor for the need for municipal waste management.
1911 ♦The mayor responded regarding the impact of municipalizing manure disposal
on citizens and farmers. Nagoya city decided to commission a company to manage
sanitary disposal for the whole city.
1912 ♦In Nagoya city, human waste treatment was carried out by the municipal
government. This was the earliest practice nationwide.
1930 The dirt cleaning law is amended. Administrative responsibility for human waste
disposal increases. It was decided that human waste was included in the waste.
Note ♦ Events related to Nagoya city.
Source Nagoya City History (2000, 133) and Hayato (1915).

As described above, the waste problem in cities became serious from
the end of the Meiji era, and the established conventional methods and
customs were no longer viable. In terms of hygiene and public health,
the habits of the past were termed ‘evil habits’. The idea that municipal
revenues could be generated by treating and using sewage prompted the
Nagoya Municipal Government to explore municipal management of
waste treatment.
Until about 1912, human waste collection in Nagoya was handled
through direct transactions between farmers and households in the city,
and farmers supplied vegetables as payment for the waste. Although the
Waste Cleaning Law was enacted nationwide in 1900, it excluded sewage
in accordance with the practice of the time. This was a measure that rec-
ognized the use of night soil as fertilizer (table 2).
However, with the rapid increase in population, more human waste
was discharged than could be used as night soil, and the old practice be-
came unsustainable. Rural areas around Nagoya began to enact regula-
tions for night soil and negotiate with city residents to stabilize the price
of collection. In addition, farmers boycotted human waste collection and
demanded lower prices for night soil. This was because prices were begin-
ning to fall due to the oversupply of human waste. Thus, in the middle of
the Meiji era, the relationship between rural and urban areas in terms of
excrement extraction changed significantly.
However, due to continued population growth and associated waste,
returning waste to rural areas as the only method of disposing of human
waste was no longer practical, and Nagoya sought an alternative meth-

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