SG/3043 Week 10: Woods and Whales: Japan's Ecological Shadow

Lecture Outline:

• 1) Japan's natural vegetation
• 2) The demise of the natural forest cover
• 3) The forest shadow
• 4) Export of industrial pollution
• 5) Flensing the whalers?

Key Concepts:

Distribution of Japan's natural vegetation reflects latitudinal and altitudinal temperature gradients in temperature; three main forest zones (subtropical, temperate, boreal) and the boundaries between them; role of shrine groves as forest remnants; role of mixed deciduous woodland in generating natural beauty of spring and autumn; human agency in loss of original forest cover; Totman's three main periods of "forest predation" (ancient, early-modern predation and modern); intervals of sustainable multiuse forestry, use control and reforestation; deforestation during Pacific War; postwar reforestation and rise of cypress and cedar plantations; recession in domestic forestry industry from 1950s, its causes and consequences for forest management; conflicts caused by recreational use since 1970s; conservation through zoning, acquisition and activism; instrumental use of sustainability discourse (eg carbon politics) by forest communities; Japan's "ecological shadow" and deforestation in SE Asia; world's largest tropical timber importer since the 1960s; sequential exploitation of forests; log and plywood imports; articulation of timber trade through patron-client relations; role of Japanese general trading companies; consequences of use of cheap plywood panels for concrete forms; origins of timber trade in war reparations; aid, corruption and the timber trade; "sustainable timber estates"; weaknesses of post-1993 environmental focus to aid; activists and JATAN; unsustainable concern for distant unwrapped forests; other parts of the shadow (eg. mining and manufacturing; role of 1970s emission controls in stimulating overseas investment by polluting industries; Japan's impact on marine resources; origins of Japanese whaling; rise of the Japanese Antarctic fleet; role of whalemeat in the immediate postwar diet; Kalland and Moeran's summary of the arguments for whaling (ecological, economic and cultural); the saving the whale as an achievable icon of conservation; romanticism and the whale; whaling communities, disempowerment and vulnerability to location of noxious facilities; distrust of IWC; whaling, racial discrimination and cultural imperialism.

The course convenor looks on as a humpback whale takes a dive off the New England coast (June, 2000). Whale-watching trips from Boston are marketed as a spiritually uplifting experience, and viewers can commune with this one on first-name terms: Ahoy there Chimney! In the nineteenth century New England whalers made regular forays into the North Pacific. In 1977 the convenor observed a fine collection of New England-made harpoons recovered from maimed animals in Japanese waters at the whaling museum at Ayukawa, a remote town once dependent on whaling, and now home to a nuclear power station.

Revision Questions:

1. To what extent can Japan's impact on the tropical forests of South East Asia be attributed to the problems of the domestic forestry industry?

2. Account for the present distribution and characteristics of Japan's forest cover.

3. Since 1970 has exported both its pollution and the limitations of its domestic environmental policies". Discuss.

4. "There is no case for a resumption of commercial whaling". Discuss, with reference to Japan.

Recommended Reading:

Tomohide Akiyama, A Forest Asian: Lessons from the Ashio Copper Mine and Reforestation Operations. Tokyo, Food and Agriculture Policy Research Centre, 1992, pp. 31-55, 114-118.

Richard Bowring and Peter Kornicki (eds.), The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 13-16.

Peter Dauvergne, Shadows in the Forest : Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia. Cambridge: MIT, 1997, Chapters 1 and 6.

Arne Kalland and Brian Moeran, Japanese Whaling: End of an Era? London: Curzon Press, 1992, Chapters 1, 4 and 9.

John Knight, "The Forest Grant Movement in Japan". In: Arne Kalland and Gerard Persoon (eds.), Environmental Movements in Asia. Richmond: Curzon, 1998, Chapter 5, pp. 110-130.

Shuhei Ninomiya, "The Protection of Nature". In: Shigeto Tsuru and Helmut Weidner (eds.), Environmental Policy in Japan. Berlin: Edition Sigma, 1989, pp. 345-360.

Akio Mishima, "Economic Policies and the Destruction of the Forests". In: Shigeto Tsuru and Helmut Weidner (eds.), Environmental Policy in Japan. Berlin: Edition Sigma, 1989, pp. 387-394.

Rene Ofreneo, "Japan and the Environmental Degradation of the Philippines". In: Michael C Howard, Asia's Environmental Crisis. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993, Chapter 10, pp, 201-219.

Takashi Sugitani, "Opposition Movement against Golf Course Development in Miyoshi Village, Chiba". Geographical Review of Japan, Vol. 71 (Series B), No. 1, 1998, pp. 31-44.

Conrad Totman, The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial Japan. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989, pp. 171-190.

Jun Ui, "Pollution Export". In: Shigeto Tsuru and Helmut Weidner (eds.), Environmental Policy in Japan. Berlin: Edition Sigma, 1989, pp. 395-411.

Anny Wong, "The Anti-Tropical Timber Campaign in Japan". In: Arne Kalland and Gerard Persoon (eds.), Environmental Movements in Asia. Richmond: Curzon, 1998, Chapter 6, pp. 131-150.