Page 188 - Changing Living Spaces

Noriko Yuzawa

cess of human waste, although the resulting increase in food production
increased the need for fertilizer. Although some of the manure was re-
turned to farmlands and contributed to agricultural production, by the
1900s, the large amount of residue had become a social problem, causing
foul odours and unsanitary conditions. This was the result of the rapid
increase in the amount of material, which could no longer be handled by
the existing circulation structure. Due to the excess, the price of human
waste decreased and a campaign to reduce collection fees was launched.
The need to dispose of the large amounts of human waste that could not
be returned to agricultural land continues to increase, and Nagoya has
changed its policy about every decade to address this problem.
Thus, since modern times, the circular structure of materials has been
gradually reshaped, in the wake of overwhelming quantitative changes in
the population. As far as this study is concerned, the material that most re-
flects this effect is human waste, used as night soil and processed as sewage.
As a preliminary note, it was a process in which the material cycle ab-
sorbed new materials and a new logic, transforming into a new cyclic
structure closely linked to the market economy. Both the use of night soil
in rural areas and the treatment of sewage in urban areas are similarly
important actors.
The non-monetary world of the farm economy, that is, the material cy-
cle of self-consumption, was generally considered a world separate from
the market economy and even from the capitalist economy. However, the
increase and refinement of the use of night soil through the development
of vegetable cultivation for urban consumers, the improvement of the
pumping and distribution system, the combination of chemical and or-
ganic fertilizers, the stabilization of the farm economy through self-suf-
ficient fertilization, and the conflict between the use of night soil and
sewage processing, as illustrated here, cannot be explained without the
influence of the market economy.
In other words, the material cycle in the modern era, the transition
period to the market economy and society, affected both the individu-
al farm economy and the market economy, and consequently, the gradu-
al structural change of the material cycle led to the fundamental support
of the market economy. In addition to Aichi Prefecture, it is necessary to
further explore this point through comparative analysis in other prefec-
tures, including the relationship between rural and suburban rural areas;
future studies may address this.

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