Nature of the Beasts represents an important and timely contribution to the growing number of works in Japanese Studies, from James Bartholomew's pioneering The Formation of Science in Japan to Brett Walker's award-winning The Lost Wolves of Japan, which adopt a cultural historical approach in analyzing environmental, scientific, and technological developments.
Nature of the Beasts tracks shifts in conceptualizing human-animal relations through the lens of Tokyo's Ueno Zoo from the nineteenth century to the present. In contrast to “ecological modernization,” which presumes progress and rationalization, Miller turns to “ecological modernity” as his structuring concept, one that leaves room for considering conflict and contradiction. Indeed, for Miller, the “defining irony of this culture was that even as it intensified the human exploitation of the natural world through the mechanics of industrialization and the expansion of the market, it imagined real nature to be elsewhere … a culture … that remains in force to this day” (p. 2).
The book's six chapters are organized into three sections: “The Nature of Civilization” traces how the government zoo was established in 1882 as an educational institution to foster mastery of Western scientific thought and technology, through its growth as an increasingly sophisticated celebration of colonial empire that was rationalized in the name of research and conservation. “The Culture of Total War” is particularly compelling in its account of how these modernization programs came to feed upon themselves, culminating with “the great zoo massacre” in which beloved animal attractions were killed with great pomp and circumstance to instill readiness in the civilian population for ultimate sacrifice as the Allies brought total war to the Japanese homeland. “After Empire” explores the radical reworking of national identity through the zoo that took place during and after occupation. The compromises that secured Japan's place within the Pax Americana paid off for the zoo as it was repopulated with animal “ambassadors of peace” from the United States and elsewhere. In the same vein, the zoo's new children's section was intended to inspire young Japanese to not only be kind to animals, but become incapable of cruelty toward them. Miller concludes with a close consideration of both international and domestic politics involving pandas, particularly how their charisma contributed to the zoo's commercial turn.
Miller periodically returns to the aforementioned notion of “ecological modernity” to inscribe an arc beyond that of the national narrative, wherein escalating consumption of natural resources in the modern world is accompanied by an increasingly entrenched illusion that nature has been removed from everyday life. While one of this work's strengths is its grounding in the specific spaces of Japan and the Ueno Zoo, this also meant less room to explore in depth the relationship between the two halves of his argument. Suggesting as it does lines of further inquiry, Nature of the Beasts should be of great interest to both Asian Studies specialists and readers concerned with how governmental institutions shape social engagement with environmental issues.
