Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Oceanic Japan: The Archipelago in Pacific and Global History

Oceanic Japan: The Archipelago in Pacific and Global History

Huebner, Stefan
Heé, Nadin
Miller, Ian Jared

Hardcover

Australia & OceaniaGeneral World HistoryJapanese History

ISBN10: 0824897684
ISBN13: 9780824897680
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: Nov 30 2024
Pages: 420
Weight: 1.60
Height: 1.40 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

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.

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Japanese History

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