Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books) - Softcover

Walker, Brett L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0295991380 ISBN 13: 9780295991382

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2011

Synopsis

Toxic Archipelago Explores the relationship between the causes of colossal toxic pollution and the manner in which pain caused by pollution insults porous human bodies Full description

About this title

Review:

Toxic Archipelago would make an excellent addition to any course on environmental issues in Asia. . . . carefully researched, thoughtfully rendered accounts of industrial disease in Japan make clear that . . . modern technology has . . . tightened the binds between us and the world we inhabit.

Author: Darrin Magee Source: Journal of Environmental Studies and Science

Walker's is an unorthodox approach to academic scholarship. It mixes academic rigor with personal anecdotes and experiences. It is historically grounded, soundly documented scholarship. It is fascinating, but at times sickly so.

Author: Miranda A. Schreurs Source: Journal of Japanese Studies

An uncomfortable, but nonetheless compelling, read. Although the author tells it as he sees it, the book is well-written and offers a reasoned and persuasive argument . . . that certainly delivers strong messages. . . . the originality and depth of the research clearly merit a cover-to-cover exploration.

Author: Catherine Mills Source: Social History of Medicine

Toxic Archipelago would make an excellent addition to any course on environmental issues in Asia. Walker's carefully researched, thoughtfully rendered accounts of industrial disease in Japan make clear that, far from liberating us from nature, modern technology has instead tightened the binds between us and the world we inhabit.

Author: D. Magee Source: Journal of Environmental Studies

In Toxic Archipelago, Brett Walker breaks new ground with his environmental history of an industrializing Japan over the last two centuries. Building on the literatures of disease and the body, he examines the co-evolution of the institutions of Japanese culture and the biology of the Japanese environment. The link between culture and environment is not simply the body, but the human body in physical and social pain. Walker forces the reader to engage with large-scale transformations of landscape and toxic pollution over time through the prism of suffering and grief with a number of finely drawn personal stories. This nuanced and beautifully written exploration of the meaning of nature and culture in Japan displays the ramifications of the hybrid environments that have evolved and poses powerful questions for people of all cultures and nations.

Author: George Perkins Marsh Prize Committee Source: ASEH

Historian Walker effectively links, perhaps for the first time anywhere, the historical processes of the economic, social, and land-use policies involved in modernizing and globalizing Japan with the pain and suffering of its environment and people.... Never has a book so clearly illustrated the aphorisms 'all politics are local,' 'the personal is the political,' and 'we are what we eat.' This discussion of the evolution of environmentalism in Japan will reflect new light on the understanding of environmental history. Essential.

Source: Choice

Walker is a superb historian and analyst, as his body of work, considerable for a relatively young scholar, manifests.... Unlike his editor, William Cronon, Brett Walker has immersed himself in a culture whose epistemology features no conceptual space for wilderness as a place where humans are not. His convincing, compelling 'from the genes up' portrait is of a living environment akin to being in Tokyo rush hour, 24/7.

Source: H-Net

Walker focuses on the complex causations of environmental crises, documenting how cultural practices, social institutions, and biochemical pathways have intertwined with the toxic byproducts of modern industry to produce devastating pollution incidents. . . . This is a thoroughly compelling and important volume that will have a substantial impact on the study of modern Japan and our understanding of the environmental history of the modern world.

Source: American Historical Review

Review:

'Ecology is history,' writes Brett Walker. Toxic Archipelago is a history of unexpected relationships and unintended consequences. It is a passionate reflection on the ecology of suffering and sacrifice and a provocative account of biological and social pain situated deep within the bodies and landscapes that have given rise to a modern industrialized Japan.

Author: Gregg Mitman, author of Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape our Lives and Landscapes

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0295991380
• ISBN 13: 9780295991382
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304