Green Japan

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Can human societies learn to live well and peacefully within ecological constraints? This burning question guides our investigation of early modern (Tokugawa) Japan. Around 1600, Japan managed to close itself off from the world for about 250 years, neither importing food nor exporting people. It was, in short, an almost hermetic ecological system, but instead of outstripping their natural resources, denuding their mountainsides, overrunning their food supply, and warring over resources, Japanese people managed to attain a level of well-being above that of most other people on the planet at that time. Given these circumstances, might early modern Japan serve as a model for a sustainable society? Some scholars say yes, calling Tokugawa Japan an "eco-utopia;" others disagree pointing especially to the emerging social tensions toward the end of the period. Some of the issues we'll discuss are population stabilization, reforestation, the power of the central government versus local autonomy, peasant ventures in agricultural and other technologies, new efficiencies in energy production, sanitation, and how monetization undermined social cohesion. Sustainability and social resilience in the face of nature constraints and disasters over centuries is rare. We'll explore whether Japan was truly "green."