INDEX
Sensing the River’s Majesty and Might, Alongside Human Resilience.
When I saw the exhibition in the beginning, I simply thought, “Water is amazing, it has the power to moisten life and physically move things. It is extremely powerful. And rivers are the gathering and flowing of all of these things. And humans are creatures that somehow try to change the environment for their own reasons. I think that is what makes us human beings. I think that power is also amazing. Whenever I go to museums, I always think that humans are interesting. The people who make museums that teach us that humans are interesting are also interesting.
We cannot live without water. That’s why we need water to flow toward us. But it is not good if too much water comes and overflows, so we need to control it just right. So we need to control it so that it is just right.
The word “valve” came to mind. A device that stops the flow or changes the amount of flow. It is also quite interresting that this character means “to speak. Come to think of it, I think speaking can also be called “controlling the flow. And speaking is also “carrying something far” – and just as I was thinking about this, a demonstration of a gun weir began!
A gun weir is a man-made dam for transporting timber! It is a device that pushes timber downstream with the force of releasing stored water all at once. In the exhibit, a one-fourth scale reproduction of the flash weir that once existed in Oyamazawa was being demonstrated using actual water! After listening to a video taken on site projected on a screen & the explanation that goes along with it, you can see the water flowing vigorously. The sound was also powerful.
It is very rare for water to be used extensively in a museum exhibit. Normally, humidity is not appreciated in order to protect exhibits. This was very interesting and unique to a river museum.
