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In Turbulent Streams: An Environmental History of Japan’s Rivers, 1600–1930, Roderick I. Wilson describes how the rivers of Japan are both hydrologically and historically dynamic. Today, these waterways are slowed, channeled, diverted, and dammed by a myriad of levees, multiton concrete tetrapods, and massive multipurpose dams. In part, this intensive engineering arises from the waterways falling great elevations over short distances, flowing over unstable rock and soil, and receiving large quantities of precipitation during monsoons and typhoons. But this modern river regime is also the product of a history that narrowed both these waterways and people’s diverse interactions with them in the name of flood control. Neither a story of technological progress nor environmental decline, this history introduces the concept of environmental relations as a category of historical analysis both to explore these fluvial interactions and reveal underappreciated dimensions of Japanese history.
Price: $126.00
Pages: 294
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Brill's Japanese Studies Library
Publication Date:
03 June 2021
ISBN: 9789004433014
Format: Hardcover
"Wilson’s careful attention to the literature in Japanese and English and
to questions of method and approach are present throughout. Altogether this
is an important new contribution to the fast-developing fi eld of Japanese
environmental history and has major implications for the urban history of
Edo/Tokyo especially."
– Mark Metzler, in The Journal of Japanese Studies 49.1, pp. 162-167 (2023)
"Roderick Wilson’s Turbulent Streams makes another fine contribution to this growing body of literature on Japanese environmental history, exploring the early modern Tokugawa era to well into the twentieth century. The book draws on a considerable volume of Japanese-language secondary sources that focus exclusively on Japan and also takes inspiration from well-known theoreticians and practitioners who make up the core of English-language environmental historical studies."
– Philip C. Brown, in Monumenta Nipponica 77.1, pp. 140-145 (2022)
– Mark Metzler, in The Journal of Japanese Studies 49.1, pp. 162-167 (2023)
"Roderick Wilson’s Turbulent Streams makes another fine contribution to this growing body of literature on Japanese environmental history, exploring the early modern Tokugawa era to well into the twentieth century. The book draws on a considerable volume of Japanese-language secondary sources that focus exclusively on Japan and also takes inspiration from well-known theoreticians and practitioners who make up the core of English-language environmental historical studies."
– Philip C. Brown, in Monumenta Nipponica 77.1, pp. 140-145 (2022)
Roderick I. Wilson, Ph.D., Stanford University, is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he teaches and writes about topics in Japanese and environmental history.