On the American Packrafting Association homepage, just above the Donate button, there is a single line of text.
The care of rivers is not a question of rivers but of the human heart.
It is signed “Shozo Tanaka.” Most visitors to the site will not know the name. In Japan, a lot of people first meet it in a school history textbook.
Packrafting in Japan is growing quickly, and plenty of people are getting on the water with no river background at all. What the APA has spent more than a decade working on is exactly what the scene here is about to run into. As a former river guide, I think the way the APA structures its safety education, and its patience with land managers, are the parts most worth borrowing.
Who was Tanaka Shōzō?
Tanaka Shōzō (1841–1913) was a Meiji-era politician from what is now Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo. He is remembered for his fight over the Ashio copper mine, whose waste poisoned the Watarase River and the farming villages downstream in the late nineteenth century.
He raised the issue in the national Diet for years, gave up his seat, and in 1901 tried to hand a petition directly to the Emperor. He spent the rest of his life living among the affected villagers. The Ashio case is often described as the starting point of Japan’s history of industrial pollution, which is why his name appears in Japanese textbooks.
About the quote itself
One caveat is worth stating plainly. The English line is widely attributed to Tanaka in English-language sources, but a matching Japanese original is hard to trace. It may be a loose rendering, or a later paraphrase.
The line he is best known for in Japan is this one:
真の文明は山を荒さず、川を荒さず、村を破らず、人を殺さざるべし
“True civilization does not ravage the mountains, does not ravage the rivers, does not destroy villages, and does not kill people.”
Whatever the exact source, the idea underneath both lines is the same: the condition of a river says as much about the people using it as about the river. It is a fair summary of what the APA does.
The APA in brief
The APA was founded in 2012 by packrafters from across the United States. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Missoula, Montana, with more than 1,500 members. Its work is organized around three words: Learn, Protect, and Connect. The full picture is on the What We Do page; the short version, for a Japanese reader’s purposes, is below.
- Be WaterWise. Twenty free safety videos made with the Packrafting Association of New Zealand. The first ten deal with recognizing hazards, the second ten with skills, running from gear and trip planning through paddling and rescue to risk judgment and group dynamics
- Packrafting 101. Three short introductory videos on planning, rigging a boat, and river hazards
- Packrafting Curriculum. A three-level framework for organizations that teach packraft-specific river courses. It lists topics rather than prescribing how to teach them
- Leashes. A clear position: leashes can entangle in moving water and have been a factor in several packrafting deaths, so they do not belong on rivers
- Low Impact Paddling. Currently focused on not moving aquatic invasive species between waters, by cleaning boats between trips
- Grand Canyon access. More than ten years of rapport with the Park Service before up to eight river miles of packrafting were allowed on a backcountry permit
- Packraft RoundUp, an ambassador program started in 2025, and an online forum
We have covered some of these in more detail:
- Be WaterWise, first module: gear to river trip planning
- Be WaterWise: basic strokes to river rescue
- Be WaterWise, third module: safety and risk judgment
- The APA on leash safety
Why this matters in Japan
The APA describes a sport that grew fast over the past decade and brought in a wave of people with no experience on rivers. That description fits Japan now.
Hokkaido’s rivers are cold all year and carry a lot of wood. A light, cheap, easy-to-carry boat puts people close to that water very quickly. The parts of the APA’s approach that translate most directly are these:
- Build safety education in stages, and make it free
- Take clear positions, even on topics where opinions differ
- Make cleaning a boat before the next river a normal habit (see Clean, Drain, Dry)
- Earn trust with land managers slowly, and keep it through how people actually behave on the water
The Grand Canyon story makes the last point well. The APA notes that packrafters who skirted the rules or planned badly were ticketed, and put the whole allowance at risk. Access is not won once. It is kept, trip by trip.
Closing
A line attributed to a Meiji-era campaigner goes into English, becomes the motto of an American packrafting group, and comes back to Japan by way of a packrafting website. How people look after rivers turns out to travel well across borders.
Packraft Hokkaido will keep introducing groups like the APA, and keep writing about safety and river manners on Hokkaido’s rivers.
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