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Ecology and Japanese History: Reactionary Environmentalism's Troubled Relationship with the Past
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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Much ecological thought today turns to Japan's past for inspiration. The reason, according to conservative Japanese ecologists, deep ecologists, and environmental philosophers, is that Japan's history of aesthetic “oneness” with nature provides a model for the world to emulate as it addresses the global environmental crisis. I critique this view by showing that conservative, or more accurately, reactionary ecology in Japan is closely intertwined with ethnic communitarianism, Japan's wartime ideology of the 1930s, and deep ecology. I suggest that these forms of reactionary ecology reflect a fascist desire to create or rely upon a nationalistic narrative of Japanese cultural uniqueness that conceals the excesses of capitalism and operates to sustain the socio-economic order that is today generating ecological catastrophe.
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References
Notes
1 I am grateful to the reviewers of this article for their comments and suggestions, and to Xinyu Liu, who worked with me as a student research assistant during the initial stages of this project.
2 See Peter Osborne, The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (London & New York: Verso, 1995), 162-68; and Mark Neocleous, Fascism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 59-74.
3 For these statements, see Wakabayashi Akihiko, “Kankyō shisō ni okeru rinrigaku teki aporōchi to etosu kara no aporōchi,” Japanese Association for Religious Studies, n.d., 179-80; Umehara Takeshi, “The Japanese View of the ”Other World“: Japanese Religion in World Perspective,” Japan Review 2 (1991): 189-90.
4 See, for example, Murota Yasuhiro, “Culture and the Environment in Japan” Environmental Management, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1985): 105; Midori Kagawa-Fox, The Ethics of Japan's Global Environmental Policy: The Conflict Between Principles and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2012), 35-36; Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1985), 43, 65-67.
5 Murota, “Culture and the Environment in Japan,” 105.
6 Umehara, “The Civilization of the Forest,” New Perspectives Quarterly, Vol. 16, Issue 2 (1999): 45.
7 See Tsurumi Kazuko, “Animism and Science,” in Adventure of Ideas: A Collection of Essays on Patterns of Creativity and a Theory of Endogenous Development (Kawaguchi: Japanime, n.d.), 288; Kagawa-Fox, Japan's Global Environmental Policy, 1, 31-2, 35; Masao Watanabe, “The Conception of Nature in Japanese Culture,” Science Vol. 183, No. 4122 (1974): 279-82. On deep ecology, see Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, ix, 66-7.
8 See Tsurumi, “Animism and Science,” 288-89; M. Senda, “Japan's Traditional View of Nature and Interpretation of Landscape,” Geojournal, Vol. 26, No. 2, History of Geographical Thought (Feb. 1992): 132, 134; Umehara, Mori no shisō ga jinrui o sukuu (Tokyo: PHP, 2015), 155; and Yamauchi Tomosaburō, “The Confucian Environmental Ethics of Ogyū Sorai: A Three-Level, Eco-Humanistic Interpretation,” in J. Baird Callicott and James McRae ed., Environmental Philosophy in Asian Traditions of Thought (Albany: State University of New York, 2014), 338-39 and 354.
9 On the prioritization of values over materiality, see Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science, New Series, Vol. 155, No. 3767 (Mar. 10, 1967), 1205-1207, much-cited in Japan's reactionary ecology; A. H. Badiner ed., Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1990), xiv, 22; and Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, ix.
10 Matsuoka Mikio, Kyoto gakuha to ekorojii (Tokyo: Ronsōsha, 2013), 56-57.
11 See Derek Hall, “Japan's Role in the Asian Environmental Crisis,” Social Science Japan Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1 (April 2001), 96; Peter Dauvergne, Shadows in the Forest: Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press, 1997), 1-2, 5, 165.
12 On postwar pollution issues, see Imamura Tomoaki et al., “History of Public Health Crises in Japan,” Journal of Public Health Policy 28 (2007): 221-37. Also see Masano Atsuko, Yondai kogaibyo: Minamatabyo, Niigata minamatabyo, Itaiitaibyo, Yokkaichi kogai (Tokyo: Chuo koronshinsha, 2013).
13 Yasuda, “Jinrui to shizen,” 164, 170. In Yasuda's text there is no mention of Fukushima, Minamata, PFOAs, Yokkaiichi asthma, Ashio, etc. Pollution in this text only appears in reference to countries other than Japan. Also see “Suspected carcinogen polluting water supply: PFOA level especially high in Osaka: Study,” Japan Times, 22 May 2007; OECD, Environmental Performance Reviews: Japan (Paris: OECD, 2002), 100.
14 Miranda. A. Schreurs, Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany, and the United States (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 47. Also see Andrew De Wit, “Hioki's Smart Community and Japan's Structural Reform,” The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol. 14, Issue 15, No. 10 (Aug 2016). De Wit calls attention to the emerging “smart communities” in Japan, such as Hioki City, which reflect structural reforms for cleaner, more efficient, and less expensive energy production.
15 For an overview of the environmental issues Japan faces today, see Ishibashi Haruo et al., Gendai Nihon no kankyō mondai to kankyō seisaku (Tokyo: Senbundo, 2012), 144-45. Ishibashi approaches these issues from an empirical standpoint outside of reactionary ecology.
16 See Yasuda, “Jinrui to shizen,” 151-177; Umehara, Mori no shishō, 161, 198 (except for a brief acknowledgement that Japan, too, had environmental problems, Japan's disastrous ecological history is absent in this work); Kitamura Masami, “Tôzai no shinrin-kan” (Eastern and Western Views of the Forest), in Yasuda Yoshinori and Sugahara Satoshi ed., Mori to bunmei (Tokyo: Asakura shoten, 1996), 19-28.
17 See, for example, Callicott and McRae ed., Environmental Philosophy; Alan Drengson and Inoue Yuichi, Diipu Ekorojii: Ikikata kara kangaeru kankyō no shisō (Kyoto: Shōwadō, 2010). In J. B. Callicott and R. Ames, Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), we do find reference to mercury pollution in Japan in the Epilogue, but the focus of this work, as the title suggests, clearly lies elsewhere.
18 Julia Adeney Thomas writes, “Much of the revolutionary recasting of the national ideology of nature occurred in the decade after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5)…Japan's ”immemorial harmony with nature“ is a twentieth-century product…” J. A. Thomas, Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 186-87.
19 See Richard Reitan, “Narratives of ‘Equivalence’: Neoliberalism in Contemporary Japan,” Radical History Review, 112 (2012): 50-51.
20 Murota, “Culture and the Environment in Japan,” 105.
21 Sonoda Minoru, “Shinto and the Natural Environment,” in John Breen and Mark Teeuwen ed., Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000), 42, 44.
22 Kitamura, “Tōzai no shinrin-kan,” 20, 21.
23 Much of this parallels early Showa era efforts to conceptualize and disseminate a subject-object unity of self and other, national subject and nation-state, humanity and nature which took shape as a desire for community and as a means to address increasingly serious social problems generating alienation and social dislocation.
24 Hiroko Tabuchi, “Braving Heat and Radiation for Temp Job,” New York Times, 10 April 2011.
25 See Paul Jobin, “Dying for TEPCO? Fukushima's Nuclear Contract Workers,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 18, No. 3 (May 2011).
26 Watsuji Tetsurō, Fūdo: Ningengaku teki kōsatsu (Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho, 2006), 17.
27 Watsuji Tetsurō, A Climate: A Philosophical Study, trans. Geoffrey Bownas (Tokyo: Ministry of Education, 1961), 19. Cf. Watsuji, Fūdo, 31.
28 Matsuoka, Kyoto gakuha to ekorojii, 340.
29 Sonoda, “Shinto and the Natural Environment,” 33, 35.
30 See Yasuda Yoshinori, Mori o mamoru bunmei, shihai suru bunmei (Tokyo: PHP Shinsho, 1997), 217-18, 220-225.
31 Matsuoka, Kyoto gakuha to ekorojii, 2, 379-80, 402, 411.
32 Steve Odin, “The Japanese Concept of Nature,” in Callicott and McRae ed., Environmental Philosophy, 252-253.
33 James McRae, “Triple-Negation: Watsuji Tetsurō on the Sustainability of Ecosystems, Economies, and International Peace,” in Callicott and McRae ed., Environmental Philosophy, 362.
34 See Watsuji, Fūdo, 170-81, where Watsuji discusses Japan's ie (household) society and the individual. Also see Tetsuo Najita and H. D. Harootunian, “Japan's Revolt Against the West,” in Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi ed., Modern Japanese Thought (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 242.
35 See McRae, “Triple-Negation,” 373, n.15.
36 See, for example, Watsuji Tetsurō, “The Way of the Japanese Subject,” in David Dilworth et al. ed., Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998), 285-287. See also the “Fundamentals of Our National Polity,” co-authored by Watsuji and published by Japan's Ministry of Education: Monbushō ed., Kokutai no hongi (Tokyo: Monbushō, 1937).
37 Watsuji, Fūdo, 177.
38 Senda, “Japan's Traditional View of Nature,” 131.
39 Yoshida Kikuko, “Kagaku gijutsu bunmei to Nihonjin no shizenkan,” Ningen to Kankyō (Journal of Human Environmental Studies) 2 (2011): 13.
40 See Umehara, Mori no shisō, 51, 84, 124, 155, 211; Umehara, “The Japanese View of the ”Other World“,” 189; Yasuda, “Jinrui to shizen,” 152; Ueda Kenji, “Shinto's View of the Human,” in Heisig et al. eds., Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2011), 544.
41 Joan Halifax, “The Third Body: Buddhism, Shamanism, and Deep Ecology,” in Allan Hunt Badiner ed., Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1990), 24; Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, ix, 67, 76.
42 Neocleous, Fascism, 76, 77.
43 Consider the severe retaliation toward those who refuse to whitewash Japan's wartime history and demand an honest account of the “comfort women” issue. See Katsuya Hirano, “A Reflection on Uemura Takashi's Talk at UCLA,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 33, No. 4 (Aug. 9, 2015), 1-3.
44 Marilyn Ivy, “Foreword: Fascism, Yet?” in Alan Tansman, ed., The Culture of Japanese Fascism (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2009), viii-ix.
45 Yasuda Yoshinori, “Nihon-teki bunmei ni yoru chikyū kankyō mondai kaiketsu e no teigen” (A Proposal for the solution to the world's environmental problems by way of Japanese civilization), Kikan seisaku keiei kenkyū, Vol. 4 (2009): 54, 58-59.
46 See, for example, Apichai W. Shipper, “Criminals or Victims? The Politics of Illegal Foreigners in Japan,” Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer, 2005): 299-327.
47 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Freedom of Hate Speech: Abe Shinzo and Japan's Public Sphere,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 8, No. 1 (Feb. 25, 2013), see 3-5.
48 David McNeill, “Nippon Kaigi and the Radical Conservative Project to Take Back Japan,” Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 48, No. 4 (Dec. 2015).
49 Sato Kei et al., “Japan's Largest Rightwing Organization: An Introduction to Nippon Kaigi,” trans. J. Victor Koschmann, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 48, No. 5 (Dec. 2015), 3.
50 Nippon Kaigi, “Kempō mondai shiryōshū: gen kempō o shiru tame no 12 shō,” 11 July, 2000. From http://www.nipponkaigi.org/opinion/archives/882, accessed June 2 2015.
51 See the text of this document at the website of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology: http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/kihon/about/index.htm. Also see David McNeill and Adam Lebowitz “Hammering Down the Educational Nail: Abe Revises the Fundamental Law of Education,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 5, Issue 7, No. 0 (July 2007).
52 Umehara, “The Civilization of the Forest,” 41.
53 Watsuji Tetsurō, “The Way of the Japanese Subject,” 285.
54 Yasuda, “Nihon-teki bunmei,” 59.
55 Yasuda, “Nihon-teki bunmei,” 59.
56 Ivy, “Foreword: Fascism, Yet?” viii. Also see Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 210.
57 Neocleous, Fascism, xi and Osborne, The Politics of Time, 161.
58 Foster et al. use this formula to understand “nature”. John Bellamy Foster et al., The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 261.
59 See R. Guha, “Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation,” Environmental Ethics Vol. 11 (Spring 1989): 71-83; Foster et al., The Ecological Rift, 47, 436-42; Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? (London & New York: Zed Books, 2007), 162.
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