Samurai Shovels 

Japan plans to spend 1 trillion yen on nationwide disaster prevention, including strengthening levies, in the fiscal year started April 1, according to the transport ministry.

Tokyo’s Edogawa, the fifth-most populated of Tokyo’s 23 districts or wards, is most at risk in the capital because it’s penned in by the Arakawa River on one side, the Edogawa River on the other, and faces Tokyo Bay, said Tachihara from the public works planning department.

“Edogawa is shaped like a basin, with the levees being the edges,” he said. ‘’Without levees 70 percent of Edogawa would be underwater in a storm.’’

Tokyo has spent centuries changing the course of rivers and building levees to reduce flooding.

Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa, the first samurai to unite Japan in 1600 and who became shogun three years later, ordered river diversions 400 years ago.

He decided to change the course of the Tonegawa, Japan’s second-longest river, so it flowed into the Pacific Ocean rather than through Tokyo, then known as Edo.

The concept of changing the course of rivers is amazing.

It is!  Edogawa sounds like New Orleans,  doesn't it?

It does! Why do humans put cities in places likely to be destroyed?

Sunk Cost Fallacy?

Ooo! That's a bingo!