Agence France-Presse in Yamagata – Updated on Apr 04, 2008
Skier Kazumi Furukawa can vividly recall the time three years ago when she stood on Mount Zao and looked down at fir trees turned into glittering crystals.
“The sky was cobalt blue and I could see the tiny snow crystals on the tips of the tree branches,” Ms Furukawa, 56, remembers with a smile.
But these days, the natural phenomenon is growing rarer, and scientists say the culprit is beyond Japan’s control – industrial pollution from China.
Mount Zao is whipped every year by wet winds from across the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, that form hoar frost – layers of ice and snow that shine like crystals on trees. The Japanese call them juhyo, or ice trees.
Skiers from Japan and other Asian nations regularly fly to the 1,600- metre mountain just for a glimpse of the juhyo, which local people describe as little monsters for their intricate twisted shapes.
Fumitaka Yanagisawa, an assistant professor of Yamagata University who has studied the juhyo for nearly two decades, warns that the frost is increasingly mixed with acid, spelling danger for the trees’ future.
This year, he recorded the highest levels of acid so far, “which could have severe ramifications on the ecosystem”, he said.
Looking at satellite data, he and another professor, Junichi Kudo of Tohoku University, concluded that the acid in the trees came from sulfur produced at factories in Shanxi province .
Since he first wrote about his research in a scientific journal in 2006, elementary-school teachers have asked him to give lectures to local children.
“It’s hard to explain this kind of scientific evidence to children, but finally they seem to come up with the same question: `What are you going to do about the problem?'” Professor Yanagisawa said.
He regretted that he had no good answer.
“The pollution comes from outside Japan. There’s a limit to what local residents here can do.”
Mount Zao is only one example of pollution hitting Japan from China, where factory emissions are causing international concern as China’s economy surges ahead.
Some schools in southern Japan and South Korea have occasionally curbed activities because of toxic chemical smog from China’s factories or sandstorms from the Gobi Desert caused by deforestation.
Environmental ministers of China, Japan and South Korea agreed last year to look jointly at the problem, but Tokyo has accused Beijing of secrecy.
“About yellow sand, I am not quite sure how and why it can be regarded as a national secret,” Japanese Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita said in February.