Oceanic Japan : The Archipelago in Pacific and Global History.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Huebner, Stefan.

Contributor:

Heé, Nadin.

Miller, Ian Jared.

Tsutsui, William M.

Armitage, David R.

Clancey, Gregory.

Demuth, Bathsheba.

Dudden, Alexis.

Dusinberre, Martin.

Ericson, Kjell.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marine ecology--Japan.

Marine ecology.

Marine resources--Japan.

Marine resources.

Ocean and civilization.

Japan--Civilization.

Japan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (433 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, 2025.

Summary:

Japan’s oceans demand our attention. Violent, prolific, and changeful, they define life and death on the archipelago: pushing the shore under the rush of tsunami, charging typhoon circulation, feeding millions, and seeding conflicts over territory and resources. And yet, Japan studies remains largely beholden to a terrestrial view of the world that is at odds with the importance of the sea. This “terrestrial bias” also means that on those occasions when oceans are recognized they are most often presented as dividers or connectors—spaces in between rather than rich ecologies and meaningful sites. Oceanic Japan is meant to help readers re-envision Japanese history in order to show how the seas created the country that we know today.The book convenes a diverse, multinational, multidisciplinary group of scholars to expand the scope of Japan studies and the field of environmental humanities. The chapters draw from the broader turn to the sea—characterized by new oceanic and terraqueous perspectives—developing within these fields and in areas such as Pacific history and Indian Ocean studies. The volume editors' vision is bifocal. On one hand, they aim to reorient East Asian studies and Japan studies to the sea, underlining how oceans have shaped dynamics from the Tokugawa Era forward into the age of empire and the crisis of the Anthropocene. On the other hand, they argue for a more nuanced environmental approach within the burgeoning field of Oceanic studies. Seeing oceanic spaces as more than entrepots or political spheres requires thinking in new, often vertical, volumetric ways. The chapters follow human and non-human actors to recognize the variegation of watery ecologies through winds, tides, coasts, seabeds, and currents such as the Kuroshio and Oyashio, which have always shaped life on the archipelago.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Conventions

Abbreviations

Oceanic Japan: Environmental Factors and a New Periodization of Japan's Archipelagic History / Stefan Huebner

Part I. Terraqueous Connections

Framing Essay: How the Sea Comes Ashore by Bathsheba Demuth

1. From Black Ships to Black Smoke: The Lines Out of Karatsu / Martin Dusinberre

2. An Urbanizing Ocean: Constructions of the Tsushima Strait, 1876-1945 / Hannah Shepherd

3. Mutsu Adrift: A Nuclear Ship, Scallop Growers, and the Inescapable Ecologies of Mutsu Bay / Toshihiro Higuchi

4. The Flavor of Rivers: Salmon, Cows, and Tree-Planting Fishers in Eastern Hokkaido, Japan / Takehiro Watanabe

Part II. Technology

Framing Essay: Of Eyes and Ships-Islands at Either End of Asia by Sujit Sivasundaram

5. Sailing within Sight of the Land: Technology and Japanese Relationships with the Sea in the Tokugawa Period / Jakobina Arch

6. The Legible South Sea of the Imperial Japanese Navy: Measuring Maritime Battlefields from the Unsinkable Destroyer Yukikaze / Brett l. Walker

7. The Platform Archipelago: Islands of Technological Adaptation Beyond a Terrestrialized Mindset / Stefan Huebner

Part III. Social Status

Framing Essay: Tales Untold by Marcia Yonemoto

8. The Strange Case of the Castaway Princess and Other Stories of Japan in the Pacific / David l. Howell

9. Turbulence in the Seto Inland Sea: The Kosaka Uprising of 1868 / Katherine Matsuura

10. Bonin Blue: People and Possibility at 27 Degrees North / Alexis Dudden

Centerpiece

Picturing the Pacific: Seas on Japanese Maps, 1600-1900 / Kären Wigen

Color Plates

Part IV. Governance

Framing Essay: Seeking Stability in Times of Change by Carmel Finley

11. Japan's Sea of Islands: An Aquapelagic History / Paul Kreitman.

12. Sampan and Uncle Sam: The Collaboration and Confrontation between Hawai'i and Washington during the Mid-Twentieth Century over Japanese Sampan Fishing in Hawaiian Waters / Manako Ogawa

13. Japanese Pelagic Fisheries and the Enclosure of the North Pacific / Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu

Part V. Danger

Framing Essay: Tumultuous and Uncanny-Japan's Ocean as a Danger Zone by Gregory Clancey

14. Tsunami Research and Preparedness in the Pacific in the Twentieth Century / Julia Mariko Jacoby

15. Tetrapods and Eco-Ontologies of Coastal Infrastructure in Japan / Gerald Figal

16. Living with the Ruined Ocean: Stories of Building the Future in Fukushima / Satsuki Takahashi

Part VI. The Materiality of Water

Framing Essay: Japan's Material Pacific by Ryan Tucker Jones

17. Islands of the Kuroshio Frontier or Building the Infrastructure of an Archipelagic Empire / Jonas Rüegg

18. Japan's Imperial Fisheries: Migration and Tuna Frontiers in the Indo-Pacific / Nadin Heé

19. Becoming Kai-Lingual: Shellfish Sensors, Oceanic Traces, and the Interpretation of Submerged Histories in Ago Bay / Kjell Ericson

Afterword: Three Views of Oceanic Japan / David Armitage

Contributors

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-8248-9927-X

OCLC:

1429142998