Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-2z2hb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-10T05:01:04.463Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Off with Their Heads! Resolving the “Garbage Problem” of Autumn Leaves in Kawagoe, Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Joshua Roth
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In the scorching summer of 2007, record temperatures were set across Japan and electrical demand for air conditioning threatened power outages throughout the Tokyo metropolitan area. Despite the oppressive heat, the leafy green canopy along Zelkova Avenue (ケヤキ通り Keyaki Dōri) extending southwest from the Tsurugashima Station on the Tobu Tojo train line provided a shady passage on my bicycle rides to the station and nearby supermarket. The tips of the highest branches of the trees on one side of the street touched those on the other. This was somewhat unusual in Japan, where trees that line city streets are often closely cropped. The trees along Zelkova Avenue had been allowed to grow to relative maturity, so they indeed appeared like giant upside down brooms with splendid foliage, as described in a plaque next to a zelkova in a Kawagoe Park.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 40 , October 2009 , e2
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2009

References

Sources

Apter, David E. and Sawa, Nagayo. 1984. Against the State: Politics and Social Protest in Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Broadbent, Jeffrey. 2003. “Movement in Context: Thick Networks and Japanese Environmental Protest,” Pp. 204–231, in Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action. New York: Oxford Press Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driscoll, Mark. 2007. “Debt and Denunciation in Post-Bubble Japan: On the Two Freeters.” Cultural Critique 65 (Winter): 164–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalland, Arne and Asquith, Pamela J.. 1997. “Japanese Perspectives of Nature: Ideals and Illusions.” Pp. 1–35, in Japanese Images of Nature: Cultural Perspectives, ed. by Asquith, Pamela J. and Kalland, Arne. Surrey, UK: Curzon.Google Scholar
Hendry, Joy. 1996. “Nature Tames: Gardens as a Microcosm of Japan's View of the World.” Pp. 83–105, in Japanese Images of Nature: Cultural Perspectives, ed. by Asquith, Pamela J. and Kalland, Arne. Surrey, UK: Curzon.Google Scholar
Ito, Teiji. 1972. The Japanese Garden: An Approach to Nature. New Haven: Yale Press Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Norris Brock. 1991. “Zuisen Temple and Garden, Kamakura, Japan: Design Form and Phylogenetic Meaning.” Journal of Garden History 10: 214–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lam, Peng-Er. 1999. Green Politics in Japan. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Henry. 2008. City Trees: A Historical Geography from the Renaissance through the Nineteenth Century. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 1998. Re-Inventing Japan. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Roth, Joshua. 2002. Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Saigusa, Hiroto. 1973. “Nihon no chisei to gijutsu” (1939). Reprinted in Saigusa Hiroto Chosaku Shu, vol. 10. Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha.Google Scholar
Sasaki-Uemura, . 2001. Organizing the Spontaneous: Citizen Protest in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Shipper, Apichai. 2008. Fighting for Foreigners: Immigration and Its Impact on Japanese Democracy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Sorenson, Andre, and Funck, Carolin, eds. 2009. Living Cities in Japan: Citizens' Movements, Machizukuri, and Local Environments. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thomas, Julia Adeney. 2001. Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar