The Yoshino River (吉野川 ''Yoshino-gawa'') is a

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

on the island of

Shikoku is the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It is long and between wide. It has a population of 3.8 million (, 3.1%). It is south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. Shikoku's ancient names include ''Iyo-no-futana-shima'' (), '' ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It is long and has a watershed of . It is the second longest river in Shikoku (slightly shorter than the Shimanto), and is the only river whose watershed spreads over the four prefectures of the island. It is regarded as one of the three greatest rivers of Japan along with the Tone and the Chikugo, and is nicknamed Shikoku Saburō (四国三郎; ''Saburō'' is a popular given name for a third son). The Yoshino rises from Mount Kamegamori (瓶ケ森) in Ino,

Kōchi Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Kōchi Prefecture has a population of 757,914 (1 December 2011) and has a geographic area of 7,103 km2 (2,742 sq mi). Kōchi Prefecture borders Ehime Prefecture to the northwest and ...

and flows to the east. In Ōtoyo it turns to the north and crosses the Shikoku Mountains. The gorge, named Ōboke Koboke, is a famous tourist attraction of Shikoku. In

Ikeda Ikeda may refer to: * Ikeda (surname), a Japanese surname * Ikeda (comics), a character in ''Usagi Yojimbo'' * Ikeda clan, a Japanese clan * Ikeda map, chaotic attractor * ''Ikeda'' (annelid) a genus of the family Ikedidae Places * Ikeda, Osaka i ...

Tokushima Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Tokushima Prefecture has a population of 728,633 (1 October 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,146 km2 (1,601 sq mi). Tokushima Prefecture borders Kagawa Prefecture to the north, E ...

it turns to the east again and pours into the

Kii Channel The , also called the Kii Strait, is a strait separating the Japanese island of Shikoku from the Kii Peninsula on the main island of Honshū. This strait connects the Inland Sea with the Pacific Ocean. The name of the strait derives from Ki ...

at the north of

Tokushima city is the capital city of Tokushima Prefecture on Shikoku island in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 249,865 in 122085 households and a population density of 1305 persons per km².The total area of the city is . Geography The ci ...

. Its major tributaries include Ananai, Iya, Dōzan, Sadamitsu, and Anabuki. The river has some "submerged bridges" (潜水橋 ''Sensuikyō''), equivalents of ''Chinkabashi'' of the Shimanto, which lack parapets in order not to be washed away by floods. The river was the subject of controversy in January 2000 when around half of eligible local residents showed up to the polls and overwhelmingly voted against a proposed dam construction across the river, with 102,759 (90.14%) registering a "no" vote and only 9,367 (8.22%) giving a "yes" vote (1.64% of votes were deemed invalid). This was considered unusual in a country where

pork barrel ''Pork barrel'', or simply ''pork'', is a metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative's district. The usage originated in American English, and i ...

public works projects In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

were common and often welcomed by locals in provincial areas. Ironically, one author has argued that because of earlier local reforms which required a 50% turnout rate for referendums to pass through, pro-dam lobbyists likely urged "yes" supporters to ''not'' turn out to vote in the hopes that the total turnout would be less than 50% and thus invalidate the inevitable "no" vote. The entire episode led to a heated struggle between opposed locals and pro-dam lobbyists over the project. Reconstruction of the Yoshino Daiju Dam (吉野川第十堰 ''Yoshino-gawa Daijūzeki'') near its mouth provoked much controversy among environmentalists.

References

External links

* Rivers of Kōchi Prefecture Rivers of Tokushima Prefecture Rivers of Japan Yoshinogawa, Tokushima Miyoshi, Tokushima {{Japan-river-stub