Unveiling of the Lindo monument in Japan
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Ladies and gentlemen,
It is very special for me to be in your country.
In the first place because this year we are celebrating four hundred years of trade relations between our two nations.
In 1609 the Dutch East India Company, the trading association from which the Dutch presence in Asia originates, received a trade permit from the Japanese Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu.
This was one of the first steps in our long, intertwined history and it marks the beginning of a special relationship.
But it is also special to be here because when I was in my twenties, I lived and worked here.
I was working on the final project for my studies at Canon Ing Baraki.
I can see a similarity.
Isaac Anne Lindo and I both came to your country as adolescents.
If this first contact was a cultural shock for me at the end of the twentieth century, what must it have been like for him, at the end of the nineteenth century?
The world was then still very large.
Just imagine what the journey must have been like.
Eight or nine weeks in a ship as opposed to an eleven-hour flight today.
From the perspective of the Netherlands and Europe, Japan was a distant, exotic country then.
Quite literally another world.
Young and full of enthusiasm, Isaac Anne Lindo could hardly wait to accomplish great things.
And this he did, together with the engineer Van Doorn, in the three and a half years that he spent in Japan.
He was impatient and enterprising. Someone who soaked up and explored the new environment.
He looked at Japan with sharp powers of observation.
He enjoyed Japanese nature; the mountains and waterfalls in the Tone River area and in the vicinity of the historic city of Nikko.
Dutch engineers came to your country at the invitation of the Japanese government and they completed a lot of work.
One work of Lindo stands out among the rest.
The result of this can be seen further on in the Seiryu Temple.
Lindo laid the basis for the current Japan Standard.
A fixed zero level for water height based on the zero level that we use in the Netherlands [the NAP or Normal Amsterdam Water Level].
This made a scientific approach to water management in Japan possible.
Since 1891, all Japanese water level measurements have been based on this zero level.
An outstanding accomplishment when you realise that all the measurements had to be taken by hand while walking along the rivers.
Today, whether in Japan or the Netherlands, we cannot imagine what it must have been like to measure water levels without a fixed standard.
This is something that is becoming increasingly more important.
Due to climate change we are facing greater extremes.
Rises in rainfall, increased dry periods, rising sea level.
In three weeks a water symposium will be held in honour of Lindo here in Urayasu. Then too, without people realising it, the fixed zero level will be the starting point for many discussions.
Before I proceed with the unveiling, I would like to thank some of the many people involved in the realisation of this monument.
In particular, Mayor Matsuzaki, for this lovely spot with a view across the water.
I would also like to thank all the parties involved in Urayasu, the people from the municipality, the tourist office, the residents associations, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the Chiba Prefecture.
I am pleased to see that we are adding a new chapter to the intensive, historic relations between Japan and the Netherlands.