Shōzō Tanaka

was a Japanese politician and social activist, and is considered to be Japan's first conservationist. Tanaka was politically active in the Meiji Restoration and leader in the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement. In Japan's first general election of 1890, he was elected to the House of Representatives as a member of the Rikken Kaishintō, a liberal political party. He is most well known for his advocacy of rural residents around the Watarase River whose health and livelihoods were negatively affected by pollution from the Ashio Copper Mine in the 1880s. Tanaka also contributed to philosophical thought on nature in the early Meiji era. Tanaka struggled with reading and writing in school, however, he excelled in aural memorization. For example he had the Confucian Analects and Mencius committed to memory. He was an apt farmer and engaged in some entrepreneurial farming projects during his youth. His community came to know Tanaka for his steadfast sense of judgement and responsibility. In 1857, Tanaka's father was promoted to superintendent of the eight villages that made up the domain. Even at the age of 17, Tanaka's village was happy to elect him as headman in his father's place, where he served for twelve years.

The end of the Tokugawa era saw major changes r extensions in Japanese economic system, a national market, domestic trade, and the commercialization of agriculture. Such changes created a more stratified lower class, with village elites (Gono). As a headman, Tanaka rose up and challenged the system made up of shogun government controlling the domain which encompassed his village. Although it took 10 years, successes of the prefectural assemblies eventually included a constitution from the emperor and an elected body.

In May 1868, Tanaka was imprisoned for challenging a higher-ranking official. Tanaka submitted a petition which called for the official’s arrest for the embezzlement of government money. In prison, Tanaka was tortured. He was forced to maintain to stress positions for extensive periods of time and survived for 30 days by licking a stick of dried bonito. Tanaka was convicted of, "...disturbing the peace of the Fief, betraying the trust of his position (as Headman of Kanaka), plotting in a nefarious manner and submitting presumptuous petitions...". He was released from prison in 1869. Kimura's son was eventually cross-examined and asserted that he had seen the killer before he left and that it could not have been Tanaka.

Tanaka became a member of the Tochigi Prefectural Assembly in 1880, and served as its Chairman in 1886. The second Pollution Prevention Committee adopted a zero tolerance policy on flooding, asserting that the Watarase and Tone Valleys, historically Japan's most fertile agriculture zones, were ill suited to agriculture and required massive reengineering to make the river system flood-proof.

Tanaka is best known for his advocacy in connection with the pollution caused by waste from the Ashio Copper Mine owned by Furukawa Ichibei. The events resulting from the mine's industrial waste are considered to be Japan's first experience with industrial scale pollution and the birth of Japan's environmental movement. Tanaka's early political efforts in 1891-1892 involved questioning the inviolability of property rights versus the public rights in article 27 of the Meiji Constitution.

In the mid-1880s, people located on the watersheds near the mine, such as Watarase and Tone watersheds, began to observe and experience negative effects of the industrial pollution from the mine, such as dying fish populations, poor harvests, and ill health. In 1890, a large flood carried poisonous wastes from the mine into surrounding areas. In 1891, after having been elected to the National Diet via Japan’s first parliamentary elections, Tanaka gave a famous speech questioning why the Meiji government had not suspended Ashio's operations based on the Meiji Constitution’s guarantees of individual property rights.

An activist uprising consisting of farmers, fishing households, soil scientists, Tokyo intellectuals, nationalists, anarchists, Christian socialists, and early Marxists developed against the environmental pollution caused by the mine. In Trends on Ecology in Japan since 17th Century, author Ui Jun states, “... [the government's response to the Ashio Copper Mine was] not clear and superficial, because high-ranked officers had the vested interest with the mine, and copper was strategic important export product.” At 11:20 on the morning of 10 Dec 1901, Tanaka attempted to perform a jikiso, “...an illegal, out-of-channels direct appeal to the sovereign punishable by death.” As an act of sacrifice, he attempted to deliver a petition written by himself and radical journalist Kotoku Shusui, directly to Emperor Meiji, who was returning to his residence from the 17th session of the Diet.

In 1911, the Diet passed the Factory Law, requiring factory inspectors to conduct pollution control. His activism associated with the Ashio Copper Mine touches on the Freedom and People's Rights Movement's ideologies of Natural Rights and Utilitarianism, ultimately leading to the development of environmental politics in Japan.

Tanaka’s political activism against the 1896 River Law led to the development of his ecological philosophy and terminology; poison (Doku) and flow (Nagare). This philosophy is described by Robert Stolz as an "...ecological theory of society based on the twin processes of nature..." In relation to the 1896 River Law, which sought to remake the Kanto Plain, Doku represented the unnatural damming of the river and the inevitable build-up of poisons in the watershed, while Nagare represented the natural way of things. He spent the rest of his life developing a unique environmental philosophy and encouraging villagers to protest against various environmentally harmful construction projects. After leaving the Diet, he lived in Yanaka village, now a district of the city of Sano, until his death by stomach cancer in 1913.