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

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Knowing Nature

1. The Agency of Insects

2. The Agency of Chemicals

3. Copper Mining and Ecological Collapse

4. Engineering Pain in the Jinzu River Basin

6. Hell at the Hojo Colliery

Conclusion

Works Cited

About the Author

Brett L. Walker is Regents' Professor and department chair of history and philosophy at Montana State University, Bozeman. He is author of The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800 and The Lost Wolves of Japan.

Reviews

"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." -Choice