Overview

Over the long course of Japan's history, its rich natural environment simultaneously supported its human inhabitants and created significant hazards and challenges. The Japanese have also influenced nature in numerous ways, from landscape modification to industrial pollution. How has the human-nature relationship changed over time in Japan? How does Japan’s environmental history compare with that of other countries, or that of the world as a whole? Environment and Society in the Japanese Islands attempts to answer these questions through a series of case studies by leading Japanese and Western historians, geographers, archaeologists, and climatologists. These essays, on diverse topics from all periods of Japanese history and prehistory, are unified by their focus on the key concepts of “resilience” and “risk mitigation.” Taken as a whole, they place Japan’s experience in global context and call into question the commonly presumed division between premodern and modern environmental history. Primarily intended for scholars and students in fields related to Japan or environmental history, these accessibly written essays will be valuable to anyone wishing to learn about the historical roots of today’s environmental issues or the complex relationship between human society and the natural environment.

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9780870718014

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Reviews

This volume...deserves credit for helping name some of the challenges that are likely to shape Japanese environmental history going forward. -Kerry Smith, Journal of Japanese Studies This rich volume presents recent research on Japanese environmental history from the perspectives of archaeology, biogeography, climatology, ecology, geographic information systems, history, and international relations in order to illuminate 'the processes of historical, socionatural change' (13) in Japan and in environmental history generally. The editors, Bruce L. Batten and Philip C. Brown, point out that Japan is instructive because many global environmental problems exist there, indigenous records for studying specific events reach far into the past, and distinctive environmental characteristics probably inhere there because it is an island country...Contributors are divided almost equally between specialists from Japan and those from abroad, representing an array of topics and methodologies at the forefront of environmental research. Each chapter brims with fresh data and sophisticated insights that will edify Japan specialists and global environmental historians alike...This is a book of great interest and importance. -Tom Havens, American Historical Review [Batten and Brown] do an excellent job of demonstrating the dynamic relationship between nature and humanity in the Japanese islands. Ichiro Miyata, Agricultural History

[Batten and Brown] do an excellent job of demonstrating the dynamic relationship between nature and humanity in the Japanese islands. Ichiro Miyata, <i>Agricultural History</i>

[Batten and Brown] do an excellent job of demonstrating the dynamic relationship between nature and humanity in the Japanese islands. Ichiro Miyata, Agricultural History

This volume...deserves credit for helping name some of the challenges that are likely to shape Japanese environmental history going forward. -Kerry Smith, Journal of Japanese Studies This rich volume presents recent research on Japanese environmental history from the perspectives of archaeology, biogeography, climatology, ecology, geographic information systems, history, and international relations in order to illuminate 'the processes of historical, socionatural change' (13) in Japan and in environmental history generally. The editors, Bruce L. Batten and Philip C. Brown, point out that Japan is instructive because many global environmental problems exist there, indigenous records for studying specific events reach far into the past, and distinctive environmental characteristics probably inhere there because it is an island country...Contributors are divided almost equally between specialists from Japan and those from abroad, representing an array of topics and methodologies at the forefront of environmental research. Each chapter brims with fresh data and sophisticated insights that will edify Japan specialists and global environmental historians alike...This is a book of great interest and importance. -Tom Havens, American Historical Review [Batten and Brown] do an excellent job of demonstrating the dynamic relationship between nature and humanity in the Japanese islands. Ichiro Miyata, Agricultural History

Author Information

Bruce L. Batten is Professor of Japanese History at J. F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, Japan and the former director of the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama, Japan. He is a specialist on ancient and medieval Japan and is the author of To the Ends of Japan: Premodern Frontiers, Boundaries, and Interactions and Gateway to Japan: Hakata in War and Peace, 500-1300 Philip C. Brown is Professor of History at The Ohio State University, USA. He is a specialist in early modern and modern Japanese history and focuses on developments affecting rural Japan. He is the author of Central Authority and Local Autonomy in the Formation of Early Modern Japan: The Case of Kaga Domain and Cultivating Commons: Joint Ownership of Arable Land in Early Modern Japan.

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