Overview

Acid Rain Science and Politics in Japan is a pioneering work in environmental and Asian history as well as an in-depth analysis of the influence of science on domestic and international environmental politics. Kenneth Wilkening's study also illuminates the global struggle to create sustainable societies. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ended Japan's era of isolation-created self-sufficiency and sustainability. The opening of the country to Western ideas and technology not only brought pollution problems associated with industrialisation (including acid rain) but also scientific techniques for understanding and combating them. Wilkening identifies three pollution-related ""sustainability crises"" in modern Japanese history - copper mining in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which spurred Japan's first acid rain research and policy initiatives, horrendous post-World War II domestic industrial pollution, which resulted in a ""hidden"" acid rain problem, and the present-day global problem of transboundary pollution, in which Japan is a victim of imported acid rain. He traces the country's scientific and policy responses to these crises.

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9780262731669

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Clearly a pioneering work in a new, developing field of Asian and comparative environmental history. It promises to deepen the understanding of environmental science and politics generally, as well as to relate them in their historical context. The book accomplishes this goal quite effectively, with a wealth of primary and secondary documentation not available elsewhere. There is nothing else that covers this important area of air pollution in such depth. It will be a major addition to the available scholarship in several fields. --James V. Feinerman, Associate Dean for International and Graduate Programs and James M. Morita Professor of Asian Legal Studies, Georgetown University Law Center

Clearly a pioneering work in a new, developing field of Asian and comparative environmental history. It promises to deepen the understanding of environmental science and politics generally, as well as to relate them in their historical context. The book accomplishes this goal quite effectively, with a wealth of primary and secondary documentation not available elsewhere. There is nothing else that covers this important area of air pollution in such depth. It will be a major addition to the available scholarship in several fields. --James V. Feinerman, Associate Dean for International and Graduate Programs and James M. Morita Professor of Asian Legal Studies, Georgetown University Law Center

""Clearly a pioneering work in a new, developing field of Asian and comparative environmental history. It promises to deepen the understanding of environmental science and politics generally, as well as to relate them in their historical context. The book accomplishes this goal quite effectively, with a wealth of primary and secondary documentation not available elsewhere. There is nothing else that covers this important area of air pollution in such depth. It will be a major addition to the available scholarship in several fields.""--James V. Feinerman, Associate Dean for International and Graduate Programs and James M. Morita Professor of Asian Legal Studies, Georgetown University Law Center

Author Information

Kenneth E. Wilkening is Assistant Professor in the International Studies Program at the University of Northern British Columbia.

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