Oceanic Japan - by Stefan Huebner & Nadin Heé & Ian Jared Miller & William M Tsutsui Hardcover

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

Oceanic Japan manages to convey both the uniqueness of Japan's historical relationship with the ocean, and its capacity to exemplify and connect to global themes of ocean history. . . . It offers the reader nearly four hundred pages, eight color plates, and numerous illustrations and maps. The four editors have organized a collected volume with twenty-nine scholars contributing across nineteen chapters, four framing essays, an introduction and conclusion, and a stand-alone centerpiece essay. It is not often you crack open an academic text to find so much waiting. The effort to arrange such a major study was well worth it. Oceanic Japan is an outstanding piece of scholarship that serves as a fitting capstone to decades of work on the maritime history of the Japanese archipelago.--Jack Bouchard, Rutgers University-New Brunswick "H-Environment"

Huebner, Heé, Miller, and Tsutsui have managed to curate a collection of works that range widely in temporal and geographic scope but still come together around a common theme of oceanic engagement that shines through in each section. The whole is greater than the parts, and the editors pull off the tricky feat of creating an edited volume that stays coherent and consistent without feeling too narrow or specialized. . . . Oceanic Japan succeeds overall in both collecting work from a wide array of maritime and Japan studies scholars into a single readable volume and in provoking a conversation between these scholars on why the view from the ocean matters to historians.--David J. McCaskey, SUNY Old Westbury "H-Oceans"

About the Author

Stefan Huebner (Editor)
Stefan Huebner is senior research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

Nadin Heé (Editor)
Nadin Heé is professor of global history at Osaka University.

Ian Jared Miller (Editor)
Ian Jared Miller is professor of history at Harvard University.

William Tsutsui (Editor)
William M. Tsutsui is chancellor and professor of history at Ottawa University.