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9 - The Pacific Context of Japan’s Environmental History

from PART II - Economy, Environment, and Technology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2024

By
Brett L. Walker
Edited by
David L. Howell
David L. Howell
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

This chapter explores Japan’s environmental history within the context of the Pacific world and its natural and human-fashioned features. Japan’s history is intertwined with the rhythms of its Pacific environment in physical and cultural ways. In this manner, the Pacific Ocean serves as a “connective force,” as one historian has described it, with far more tensile strength than the brittle cultural coherency of East Asian or Western civilization. The Pacific world provides coherency to Japanese history in ways that are often neglected but that relate to Japan’s modern industrial successes and its likely Anthropocene tragedies. By analyzing Pacific tectonics, Pacific highlands and lowlands, Pacific hydrography, Pacific climates, and Pacific politics and culture, this chapter demonstrates that the Pacific Ocean is not only a “connective force” of Japan’s history but also the energy source that powers much of it as well.

Keywords

climateAnsei earthquakeAsamaKuroshiovolcanismwhalingAinuforestryfertilizerpollutionhydrographyOyashioHokkaido
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Japan , pp. 296 - 341
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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