Description
Book SynopsisIt is widely known that such Western institutions as the museum, the university, and the penitentiary shaped Japan's emergence as a modern nation-state. Less commonly recognized is the role played by the distinctly hybrid institutionat once museum, laboratory, and prisonof the zoological garden. In this eye-opening study of Japan's first modern zoo, Tokyo's Ueno Imperial Zoological Gardens, opened in 1882, Ian Jared Miller offers a refreshingly unconventional narrative of Japan's rapid modernization and changing relationship with the natural world. As the first zoological garden in the world not built under the sway of a Western imperial regime, the Ueno Zoo served not only as a staple attraction in the nation's capitalan institutional marker of national accomplishmentbut also as a site for the propagation of a new natural order that was scientifically verifiable and evolutionarily foreordained. As the Japanese empire grew, Ueno became one of the primary sites of imperialist specta
Trade Review"A triumph. . . .archival richness. . . .analytic dexterity and elegant writing." * Times Literary Supplement *
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The Nature of the Beasts is a model of interdisciplinary environmental history and a must-read for anyone interested in the politics of the modern zoo." * Enviromental History *
"A rich political and cultural history of modern Japan." * Cross-Currents *
"Makes an important contribution to our understanding of how governments outside of the United States and Europe have used zoo animals to further political goals." * American Historical Review *
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The Nature of Beasts is a critical intervention in global zoo, environmental and Japanese histories. It stands on its own as a fascinating and thoughtful history, but also provides opportunities for future scholarly exploration into patterns of human dominion over nature across the East Asian world." * Pacific Affairs *
"This is a path-breaking contribution to the history of science, environmental history, and Japanese history." * Journal of Japanese Studies *
"It is difficult to find fault with Miller's carefully researched, elegantly written, and convincingly argued monograph." * East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine *
“The book provides a rich canvas for a variety of cross-cultural comparisons.” * Monumenta Nipponica *
Table of ContentsFigures
Foreword by Harriet Ritvo
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
INTRODUCTION
Japan’s Ecological Modernity
I. Animals in the Anthropocene
II. Ecological Modernity in Japan
III. The Natural World as Exhibition
PART ONE
The Nature of Civilization
CHAPTER ONE:
Japan’s Animal Kingdom: The Origins of Ecological Modernity and the Birth of the Zoo
I. Bringing Politics to Life
II. Sorting Animals Out in Meiji Japan
III. Animals in the Exhibitionary Complex
IV. The Ueno Zoo
V. Ishikawa Chiyomatsu and the Evolution of Exhibition
VI. Bigot’s Japan
CHAPTER TWO:
The Dreamlife of Imperialism: Commerce, Conquest, and the Naturalization of Ecological Modernity
I. The Dreamlife of Empire
II. The Nature of Empire
III. Nature Behind Glass
IV. Backstage at the Zoo
V. The Illusion of Liberty
VI. Imperial Trophies
VII. Imperial Nature
PART TWO
The Culture of Total War
CHAPTER THREE:
Military Animals: The Zoological Gardens and the Culture of Total War
I. Military Animals
II. Mobilizing the Animal World
III. The Eye of the Tiger
IV. Animal Soldiers
V. Horse Power
CHAPTER FOUR:
The Great Zoo Massacre
I. Tokyo, 1943
II. A Strange Sort of Ceremony
III. Mass-Mediated Sacrifice
IV. The Taxonomy of a Massacre
V. The Killing Floor
VI. And Then There Were Two
PART THREE
After Empire
CHAPTER FIVE:
The Children’s Zoo: Elephant Ambassadors and Other Creatures of the Allied Occupation
I. Bambi Goes to Tokyo
II. Empire After Empire
III. Neo-Colonial Potlatch
IV. “Animal Kindergarten”
V. Occupied Japan’s Elephant Mania
VI. Elephant Ambassadors
CHAPTER SIX:
Pandas in the Anthropocene: Japan’s “Panda Boom” and the Limits of Ecological Modernity
I. The “Panda Boom”
II. The Science of Charisma
III. Panda Diplomacy
IV. “Living Stuffed Animals”
V. The Biotechnology of Cute
EPILOGUE:
The Sorrows of Ecological Modernity
Notes
Bibliography
Indext
