Japan: a land plagued by volcanoes, earthquakes and typhoons, yet blessed with a climate suitable for all manner of agriculture and forestry, and positioned where ocean currents collide and bring an abundance of the ocean’s resources to its people; a country which moved quickly from an agrarian pre-industrial society to become one of the world’s great economic powerhouses in only a few decades, spoiling water, air and land in the process, bringing misery to many of its people; a country with expansionist desires, colonizing neighboring lands, leading to war, defeat, destruction and, for the first time in history, nuclear devastation and its aftermath; a land and its people which share a remarkable resilience and ability to evaluate and correct their mistakes and renew their trajectory towards a better future.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: Perspectives of Environmental History in Japan
- Part 1: Topology of Environmental History
- Chapter 1: Cultural Landscapes in Japan: Case Studies in Shiga, Ehime and Okinawa Prefectures
- Chapter 2: Japan’s Colonial Environments
- Chapter 3: National Parks, Nature Conservation, War: The Development of the National Parks System in Japan, 1907–1945
- Part 2: Pollution Incidents/Disasters
- Chapter 4: The Ashio Affair: The Emergence of Industrial Pollution as a Social, Political and Environmental Issue (19th–20thCenturies)
- Chapter 5: Two Outbreaks of Minamata Disease and the Struggle for Human Rights
- Chapter 6: Black Rain, Lawsuits and Compensation: Radiation in the Environment and Human Exposure in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- Chapter 7: Environmental Problems Caused by the Shinkansen in Nagoya City
- Part 3: Between Nature and Humans
- Chapter 8: Epidemiological Landscape and Medical Theories: Focusing on a History of Smallpox in Early Modern Japan
- Chapter 9: Between Nature and Human: History of the Use of “Night Soil” in Japan
- Chapter 10: Agricultural Technology and the Environment in Modern Japan
- Part 4: Seas, Lakes and Shores
- Chapter 11: Regional Environmental History: The Lake Biwa Region
- Chapter 12: The 20th Century around Tokyo Bay: Life, Production, and Environment
- Chapter 13: Tuna Fisheries and Thermonuclear Tests, 1954–1963
- Part 5: Forestry
- Chapter 14: Japanese Swidden Agriculture (yakihata): Environmental History of Grassland, Forest and Fire
- Chapter 15: A History of Tree Planting in Modern Japan: Resource Utilization and Environment Conservation
- Chapter 16: Empire Forestry Endures: The Development and Continuity of Japanese Forestry in Southeast Asia, 1930–1970
- Index