Oceanic Japan

The Archipelago in Pacific and Global History
Help readers re-envision Japanese history in order to show how the seas created the country that we know today.
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>/i> 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.

Contributor: Stefan Huebner (Edited by), Nadin Heé (Edited by), Ian Jared Miller (Edited by), William Tsutsui (Edited by), Satsuki Takahashi (Contributions by), Takehiro Watanabe (Contributions by), Kären Wigen (Contributions by), Marcia Yonemoto (Contributions by), Brett L. Walker (Contributions by), Mary Carmel Finley (Contributions by), Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu (Contributions by), Sujit Sivasundaram (Contributions by), David R. Armitage (Contributions by), Gregory Clancey (Contributions by), Nadin Heé (Contributions by), Toshihiro Higuchi (Contributions by), Katherine Matsuura (Contributions by), Jonas M. Rüegg (Contributions by), Bathsheba Demuth (Contributions by), Alexis Dudden (Contributions by), David L. Howell (Contributions by), Stefan Huebner (Contributions by), Julia Markio Jacoby (Contributions by), Jakobina Arch (Contributions by), Martin Dusinberre (Contributions by), Ryan Tucker Jones (Contributions by), Paul Kreitman (Contributions by), Hannah Shepherd (Contributions by), Manako Ogawa (Contributions by), Kjell Ericson (Contributions by), Gerald Figal (Contributions by)

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