Discusses the growth/environment dilemma in contemporary Japan. -- Preface.

Bad Water is a sophisticated theoretical analysis of Japanese thinkers and activists' efforts to reintegrate the natural environment into Japan's social and political thought in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. The need to incorporate nature into politics was revealed by a series of large-scale industrial disasters in the 1890s. The Ashio Copper Mine unleashed massive amounts of copper, arsenic, mercury, and other pollutants into surrounding watersheds. Robert Stolz argues that by forcefully demonstrating the mutual penetration of humans and nature, industrial pollution biologically and politically compromised the autonomous liberal subject underlying the political philosophy of the modernizing Meiji state. In the following decades, socialism, anarchism, fascism, and Confucian benevolence and moral economy were marshaled in the search for new theories of a modern political subject and a social organization adequate to the environmental crisis. With detailed considerations of several key environmental activists, including Tanaka Shōzō, Bad Water is a nuanced account of Japan's environmental turn, a historical moment when, for the first time, Japanese thinkers and activists experienced nature as alienated from themselves and were forced to rebuild the connections.

What is religion? How does it work? Many natural abilities of the human mind are involved, and crucial among them is the ability to use language. This volume brings together research from linguistics, cognitive science and neuroscience, as well as from religious studies, to understand the phenomena of religion as a distinctly human enterprise. The book is divided into three parts, each part preceded by a full introductory chapter by the editors that discusses modern scientific approaches to religion and the application of modern linguistics, particularly cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. Part I surveys the development of modern studies of religious language and the diverse disciplinary strands that have emerged. Beginning with descriptive approaches to religious language and the problem of describing religious concepts across languages, chapters introduce the turn to cognition in linguistics and also in theology, and explore the brain's contrasting capacities, in particular its capacity for language and metaphor. Part II continues the discussion of metaphor - the natural ability by which humans draw on basic knowledge of the world in order to explore abstractions and intangibles. Specialists in particular religions apply conceptual metaphor theory in various ways, covering several major religious traditions-Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. Part III seeks to open up new horizons for cognitive-linguistic research on religion, looking beyond written texts to the ways in which language is integrated with other modalities, including ritual, religious art, and religious electronic media. Chapters in Part III introduce readers to a range of technical instruments that have been developed within cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis in recent years. What unfolds ultimately is the idea that the embodied cognition of humans is the basis not only of their languages, but also of their religions.

This book is a must; it is best reading for all interested in or working on environmental policy formulation and implementation, be it in a polluted industrial country or in a polluting developing country. Environmentalist . . . a well-conceptualized analysis of the evolution of Japan s environmental policies and programmes. . . The quality of integration from chapter to chapter is much superior to that of most multiple-author texts. International Sociology Review of Books The eleven contributors to this book provide profound retrospective view son the fearsome damage inflicted on the environment of Japan and on its people during the rapid economic growth period from late 1950s to the early 1970s. The book also presents a clear vision of how developing countries might draw lessons from Japan s experiences in overcoming some of its pollution problems. Hiroshi Ohta, Pacific Affairs This is, I m sure, the most comprehensive and the best book ever on Japan s environmental policy. This book is a must; it is best reading for all interested in or working on environmental policy formulation and implementation, be it in a polluted industrial country or in a polluting developing country. Udo E. Simonis, Internationales Asienforum The volume is a great source to explain what factors have made Japanese pollution control policy so successful. . . Imura and Schreurs have unveiled the intricacies of Japanese pollution control policy in this volume. The book can be used at the undergraduate and graduate level, particularly as a stepping stone in projects focused on minimization of contaminant emissions and on Japanese environmental policy and politics. Raul Pacheco-Vega, Global Environmental Politics A gold mine of information, this book gives a balanced, comprehensive, and authoritative analysis of Japan s environmental policy and candidly covers both its considerable achievements and persistent limitations. Although this volume focuses on issues of policy implementation, it impressively addresses most aspects of environmental issues in Japan. . . This is indeed a superb book that provides encyclopedia-like information about environmental issues in Japan and is unmatched, especially in its emphasis on policy implementation. Lam Peng Er, Journal of Japanese Studies Japanese environmental management style is in many ways distinct from that found in Europe or the USA. There is less emphasis on litigation, more emphasis on administrative guidance and considerable use of voluntary mechanisms for policy implementation. This volume considers what factors may have contributed to Japan s relatively successful efforts at dealing with severe industrial pollution and problems associated with rapid urbanization. The book introduces Japan s environmental history, its key environmental regulations and the forces that have driven Japan to introduce these environmental regulations and programs. It also examines the various formal and informal institutional mechanisms and policy instruments that have been introduced over the past several decades to implement pollution control and energy conservation. The authors conclude by putting Japan s environmental policy experiences in comparative perspective and considering what useful lessons can be drawn from the Japanese experience for developing nations. Providing a detailed analysis of environmental policies and policy instruments in Japan by leading experts in the field, this book will be of great interest to students of environmental policy and politics and policymakers concerned with environmental protection in Asia.

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 industrialization (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 through six distinct periods related to acid rain problems and argues that Japan's leadership role in East Asian acid rain science and policy today can be explained in large part by the "historical scientific momentum" generated by efforts to confront the issue since 1868, reinforced by Japan's cultural affinity with rain (its "culture of rain"). Wilkening provides an overview of nature, culture, and the acid rain problem in Japan to complement the general set of concepts he develops to analyze the interface of science and politics in environmental policymaking. He concludes with a discussion of lessons from Japan's experience that can be applied to the creation of sustainable societies worldwide.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

Amidst growing environmental concerns worldwide, Japan is seen as particularly vulnerable to the effects of changing climate. This book considers Japan’s response to the climate change problem from the late 1980s up to the present day, assessing how the Japanese government’s policy-making process has developed over time. From the early days of climate change policy in Japan, through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conferences and Kyoto Protocol, right up to the 2015 negotiations, the book examines the environmental, economic, and political factors that have shaped policy. As the 2015 Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change projects forward beyond 2020, the book concludes by analyzing how Japan has placed itself in the global climate change debate and how the country might and should respond to the problem in the future, based on the findings from accumulated history.

Politics in Japan is undergoing a major transformation. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has, since 2012, embarked upon an ambitious programme of policy reforms as well as changes to Japan’s governing structures and processes. At the heart of this policy agenda is ‘Abenomics’ – a set of measures designed to boost Japan’s flagging economy, but one which is yet to deliver on its promises. In this fully revised and updated second edition of his classic text, Ian Neary explores the dynamics of democracy in Japan, introducing the key institutions, developments and actors in its politics from the end of the Second World War to the present day. Packed with illustrative material and examples, this comprehensive study traces the continuities and the changes that are underway in five major policy areas: foreign and defence, industry, social welfare, the environment and human rights. Assuming no prior knowledge of Japan, this textbook will be an invaluable and welcome resource for all students interested in the government and politics of contemporary Japan and its international profile.

Green Japan critically examines the Japanese effort to combine economic growth with commitments to environmental sustainability.

Japan at Nature’s Edge is a timely collection of essays that explores the relationship between Japan’s history, culture, and physical environment. It greatly expands the focus of previous work on Japanese modernization by examining Japan’s role in global environmental transformation and how Japanese ideas have shaped bodies and landscapes over the centuries. The immediacy of Earth’s environmental crisis, a predicament highlighted by Japan’s March 2011 disaster, brings a sense of urgency to the study of Japan and its global connections. The work is an environmental history in the broadest sense of the term because it contains writing by environmental anthropologists, a legendary Japanese economist, and scholars of Japanese literature and culture. The editors have brought together an unparalleled assemblage of some of the finest scholars in the field who, rather than treat it in isolation or as a unique cultural community, seek to connect Japan to global environmental currents such as whaling, world fisheries, mountaineering and science, mining and industrial pollution, and relations with nonhuman animals. The contributors assert the importance of the environment in understanding Japan’s history and propose a new balance between nature and culture, one weighted much more heavily on the side of natural legacies. This approach does not discount culture. Instead, it suggests that the Japanese experience of nature, like that of all human beings, is a complex and intimate negotiation between the physical and cultural worlds. Contributors: Daniel P. Aldrich, Jakobina Arch, Andrew Bernstein, Philip C. Brown, Timothy S. George, Jeffrey E. Hanes, David L. Howell, Federico Marcon, Christine L. Marran, Ian Jared Miller, Micah Muscolino, Ken’ichi Miyamoto, Sara B. Pritchard, Julia Adeney Thomas, Karen Thornber, William M. Tsutsui, Brett L. Walker, Takehiro Watanabe.