Water Wise Extra: Water Conservation No Big Deal in Japan

Masaki Sato and Takayuki Takinami didn’t seem excited about the topic I wanted to speak with them about — golf course irrigation management and water conservation in Japan.

I met Sata and Takinami at the U.S. Open in June at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, N.Y. The two and a few of their comrades volunteered on the golf course maintenance crew. I got the impression Sata and Takinami didn't understand why I wanted to talk to them about water management because it doesn't seem to be that big of a matter for Japanese golf courses.

Sato, senior managing director for Axxion Corp., a golf course distributor in Tokyo, says water conservation is not a big issue for many golf courses in Japan, especially around Tokyo.

"We get 50 to 60 inches of rain a year," he explains.

Some of the nation's more than 2,000 golf courses don't even have irrigation systems. Their maintenance crews rely on water tanks to hand-water where it’s needed, Sato says.

Takayuki Takinami, owner of the Keiyo Country Club in Chiba City, Japan, says, "We don't care how much water we use on my course. It's not a problem."

Takinami says the fairways at Keiyo are hardly ever watered. Then again, they're comprised of zoysiagrass, a warm-season grass native to Japan that's extremely drought-tolerant. Zoysiagrass has a deep root system, which allows it to more effectively extract water from greater soil depths.

Takinami says non-golfers in Japan are more concerned about the cutting down of trees to build golf courses than the water used to irrigate them.

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