Remake Politics, Not Nature
Tanaka Shozo's Philosophies of 'Poison' and 'Flow' and Japan's Environment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2132111 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert Stolz (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | S2 |
| Pages | 56-68 |
| Publication date | 2012-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Japan focus (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1557-4660 • E-ISSN: 1557-4660 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1557466012024643 |
| OpenAlex | W4410183351, W4410181800 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
Tanaka Shozo (1841-1913) is widely acknowledged as Japan's "first conservationist." A former village headman, in the 1890s he led the fight against the Ashio Copper Mine's pollution of the Watarase and Tone rivers northwest of Tokyo. Tanaka's endeavors are frequently cast as a peasant warning to an industrializing Japan, but they can more accurately be seen as the work of a modern environmental thinker who developed a sophisticated ecological theory of society based on the twin processes of nature: "poison" (doku) and "flow" (nagare). From this position he went on to combat the Meiji state's flood control plans for the Kanto plain: a massive reengineering of the entire watershed and the beginning of the Japanese state's systematic intervention in nature. In response to the state's flood control plan, Tanaka's Fundamental River Law (konponteki kasenho) and philosophies of "poison" and "flow" describe the harm that comes from ignoring the dictates of an active nature in the name of absolute human agency. His law revered flow, "not as a made thing" but as fundamental to nature, indeed, to all life
Mechanics · Physics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
|---|