Beyond the Mountains looks at illegal dumping in Japan. Invested in the correlation of consumerism, waste, and nature, it focuses on the large-scale cases across the nation mainly in mountainous areas during the 1990s and 2000s, along with some important related matters. The various mountainous imagery, from exact illegal dumping spots to piles of waste in fact, filters out the sinister aspects of environmental invasion and seeks to highlight the positive narratives to re-examine our understanding of consumption. By referencing and reproducing archival images from the national government, local authorities, and the general public, and combining them with my own photographs of present scarred landscape, the project depicts the discrepancy between the impression given nowadays and the unexposed past of my country. At the same time, regarding Japan as a case study, it represents the contemporary human impact on nature across the globe. 

According to the rapid economic growth, the amendment of the law in 1970, made waste in Japan classified into municipal waste and industrial waste. The former is the responsibility of each local government to dispose of; the 23 Cities of Tokyo Metropolis jointly operate 21 incineration plants and a final disposal site within the area for instance. The latter, on the other hand, is the responsibility of the processors, and wide-area disposal by intermediaries is permitted, which has led to uncontrollable private business; the tremendous quantities of industrial waste were illegally dumped.

The large-scale cases were mainly exposed between the 1990s and 2000s across the nation, and hardly seen these days. In many of those past cases, however, projects such as removal are still being carried out as administrative enforcement with huge budgets, and water purification is taking a long time. In addition, small-scale illegal dumping, which does not appear in government statistics, is thought to exist here and there in Japan without being dealt with, and mountains of waste containing organic matter are at high risk of spontaneous combustion. 

Traditional Japanese rural landscapes can still be seen today between cities and deep mountains. Most illegal dumping, regardless of its size, takes place in such areas, called satoyama, a Japanese term for the ecosystem where human and nature coexist. This responsibility lies not only with the government and companies directly involved in the industrial waste disposal business, but also with each of us as consumers, since this issue stemmed from our modern society of mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal.

This archive is both a single record of waste-related issues in Japan's vertically divided administration, and a reflection on 'the law of unintended consequences'.

(The statement as of June 2023)

「山を越えて」は、日本の不法投棄に関するビジュアルアーカイブである。日本全国の大規模な不法投棄事案とそれに関連する重要な事柄について、国や自治体ならびに一般市民からの写真、地図、図、表、資料および私自身の撮影した写真が集められている。

高度経済成長に伴う1970年の廃棄物処理法改正から、日本の廃棄物は一般廃棄物と産業廃棄物に分類されるようになった。前者は各自治体の責任で処理される一方、後者は排出者の責任で処理され、中間処理業者を介した広域移動も認められていることが、この問題の重要な要因のひとつである。不法投棄のほとんどは産業廃棄物だからだ。

大規模な不法投棄事案は主に1990年代から2000年代にかけて全国で摘発され、最近ではほとんど見かけなくなった。しかし、大規模事案の多くは、今もなお撤去等の事業が行政代執行として続いており、特に水質浄化には長い時間がかかっている。また、行政の統計上には現れない小規模の不法投棄が、処理されないまま日本のあちこちに存在していると考えられ、有機物を含むゴミの山は自然発火の危険性が高い。これは過去の問題ではない。

都市と山奥の間に見られ、日本の伝統的な田園風景でもある「里山」は、人と自然が共存する生態系を意味する。規模の大小にかかわらず、産業廃棄物の不法投棄の多くはこの里山と呼ばれる地域で行われている。この問題は、大量生産・大量消費・大量廃棄の現代社会が生み出したものであり、産業廃棄物処理に直接関与する政府や企業だけでなく、消費者である私たち一人ひとりにこそ責任がある。

このアーカイブは、日本の縦割行政における廃棄物関連問題をひとつにまとめた記録であると同時に、「意図せざる結果」の法則を考察するプロジェクトである。

（2023年6月現在のステートメント）

The photobook as an object represents the quantity, multi-layers, complexity and concealment of illegal dumping in Japan.

オブジェとしてのフォトブックは、日本における不法投棄の量、多層性、複雑性、隠蔽性を表している。