Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 340 pages
- Published by: The MIT Press July 1, 2004
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0262232359
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0262232357
-
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
- Weighs: 1.5 pounds
Product Review
"Clearly a pioneering work in a new, developing field of Asian and comparative environmental history. It promises to deepen the understanding of environmental science and politics generally, as well as to relate them in their historical context. The book accomplishes this goal quite effectively, with a wealth of primary and secondary documentation not available elsewhere. There is nothing else that covers this important area of air pollution in such depth. It will be a major addition to the available scholarship in several fields."
—James V. Feinerman, Associate Dean for International and Graduate Programs and James M. Morita Professor of Asian Legal Studies, Georgetown University Law Center
"There are few works that do such a thorough job of presenting developments in Japanese science to an English-speaking audience, and there is no book that deals in such detail with the science-policy interface in the environmental policy realm in Japan. This is a meticulously researched and well-written book."
—Miranda A. Schreurs, Department of Government and Politics,
University of Maryland
Product Description
Acid Rain Science and Politics in Japan is a pioneering work in environmental and Asian history as well as an in-depth analysis of the influence of science on domestic and international environmental politics. Kenneth Wilkening's study also illuminates the global struggle to create sustainable societies.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ended Japan's era of isolation- created self-sufficiency and sustainability. The opening of the country to Western ideas and technology not only brought pollution problems associated with industrialization (including acid rain) but also scientific techniques for understanding and combating them. Wilkening identifies three pollution-related "sustainability crises" in modern Japanese history: copper mining in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which spurred Japan's first acid rain research and policy initiatives; horrendous post-
World War II domestic industrial pollution, which resulted in a "hidden" acid rain problem; and the present-day global problem of transboundary pollution, in which Japan is a victim of imported acid rain. He traces the country's scientific and policy responses to these crises through six distinct periods related to acid rain problems and argues that Japan's leadership role in East Asian acid rain science and policy today can explained in large part by the "historical scientific momentum" generated by efforts to confront the issue since 1868, reinforced by Japan's cultural affinity with rain (its "culture of rain"). Wilkening provides an overview of nature, culture, and the acid rain problem in Japan to complement the general set of concepts he develops to analyze the interface of science and politics in environmental policymaking. He concludes with a discussion of lessons from Japan's experience that can be applied to the creation of sustainable societies worldwide.
Search for books at
