Seiei Toyama

Seiei Toyama is a Japanese environmentalist and the recipient of the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, recognizing his two-decade-long effort to combat desertification in China, carried out in a spirit of solidarity and peace.

Toyama was born in Shinkura, Mizuho Village, Minamitsuru County, Yamanashi Prefecture (now part of Shinkura, Fujiyoshida City). He studied at Yamanashi Prefectural Hikawa Junior High School (now Yamanashi Prefectural Hikawa High School) and later graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture at Kyoto Imperial University. Over the years, he successfully reforested 20,000 hectares of desert in China. In recognition of his achievements, he became the only person, aside from Mao Zedong, to have a bronze statue erected in China during his lifetime.

Early life and education

Toyama was born as the third of six children to a family that lived in the Taisho-Ji temple of the Jodo Shinshu Hongan-Ji sect of Buddhism. He was accepted into the Faculty of Agriculture at Kyoto Imperial University. After graduating, he worked as an assistant professor at the university. In 1934, at the age of 28, he received an offer from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to study land and agriculture in mainland China. During his studies, the Gobi Desert had eroded farmland, leading to the impoverishment of more than 20 million people who had starved to death. Among the people waiting in a queue of several dozen kilometers for a bowl of rice porridge at a soup kitchen, he refused a request to buy his 15-year-old daughter for 30 yen (at the time). Two years later, he was ordered to return home after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

In 1962, he received his doctorate in agriculture from Kyoto University. His thesis was titled "Study on the Special Environment of Sand Dune Areas and Adapted Crops". He retired in 1971. The following year, in 1972, when diplomatic relations between Japan and China were normalized, he left his family in Japan and visited China alone, spending all his money. The Chinese government was unable to stop desertification, and the site of a village in the 1930s had become a ghost town. In the desert, which is as large as Shikoku and is known as the "land of death" that has produced more than 20 million refugees, he walked dozens of kilometers every day in temperatures exceeding 40 degrees during the day, digging the sand by hand and discovering a water source. After discovering the water source a few months later, he raised donations in Japan and, based on the example of the Tottori Sand Dunes, collected about 70 million kudzu seeds, which can grow in the desert, over the course of eight years.

At the age of 80, Toyama and his staff visited China to plant 3,000 kudzu seeds, which were eaten overnight by local grazing goats and their owners. When they planted poplar trees instead, the trees died due to lack of moisture. As a result, Toyama and his staff brought over from Japan a highly water-retaining polymer from Japanese diapers and used it, which proved successful, and when the million trees planted were washed away by Yellow River flooding, with the cooperation of the locals, they were quickly replanted. One year after the flood, the dead land had become a 20,000-hectare green forest, and the area was successfully converted into farmland. Vegetables were able to be grown, and the residents who had left returned. In this way, Toyama revived what was once a "dead land". His efforts were featured in the NHK documentary " Project X: The Challengers."

In 1991, Toyama founded the NPO Japan Desert Greening Association. He has since then has worked with volunteers to carry out greening activities, such as planting poplar trees in China's Kubuqi Desert.

In 1996, the Chinese government erected a bronze statue of him. He is the only person other than Mao Zedong to have one built while he was still alive.

In August 2003, Toyama was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award (in the category of Peace and International Understanding), known as the Asian Nobel Prize, for his achievements .

He passed away from pneumonia in February 2004 (aged 97) in Tottori City.

In November 2005, the Toyama Masaaki Memorial Room was opened at Kodomo no Kuni in the Tottori Sand Dunes .

His eldest son, Masao Toyama, carried on his father's wishes by starting a reforestation project in Zambia in 1989.

References

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Ramon Magsaysay Award winners