Documented Work

In Japan's first general election of 1890, he was elected to the House of Representatives as a member of the Rikken Kaishintō, a liberal political party. He is most well known for his advocacy of rural residents around the Watarase River whose health and livelihoods were negatively affected by pollution from the Ashio Copper Mine in the 1880s. Tanaka also contributed to philosophical thought on nature in the early Meiji era. The record is attributed to Shōzō Tanaka; it does not imply sole authorship of developments produced by a wider field or community.