B.L. Batten
Nakatsuka’s research is important because it takes us away from environmental determinism
toward a more dynamic conception of the Japanese past. To be sure, natural disasters and climate
change can have a direct impact on human society, but what really matters is how society responds
and acts. Let us now turn to that human dimension.
Society as actor
The first point to be made here is that humanity’s ecological footprint has increased dramatically
over the course of human prehistory and history. Early humans caused the extinction of various
species of large animals (most dramatically, in North America and New Zealand), and they altered
natural landscapes by the use of fire, but that was about all. Today our activities are resulting in
historically unprecedented climate change and what is often characterized as the Sixth Mass
Extinction event of geological time. Many scholars now refer to our era as the “Anthropocene”
because of the profound, perhaps irreversible, changes we are inflicting on earth’s natural
systems.
Both the archaeological and the historical records contain many examples of how human
activities altered Japan’s natural environment. The first example is the most tentative: it has been
argued that in Japan, as in other parts of the world, the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna
resulted from overhunting.^40 Later instances of human influence are more clear- cut. With the
advent of agriculture, people modified ecosystems by intentionally introducing foreign crops
and livestock and unintentionally introducing weeds and pests.^41 People cut down forests and
created fields in their place. They created irrigation works such as ponds, canals, and dams. They
built dikes along rivers and shorelines, and sometimes diverted entire rivers (for example, the
Tone River near Edo in the seventeenth century). They built roads, cities, and castles. Over the
very long term, the scale of these interventions tended to increase as the result of population
growth and enhanced technical and organizational capabilities.^42
Probably the single biggest impact was deforestation. Cutting down trees to make fields was
just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Premodern Japanese cut down entire forests to provide fuel
for the production of pottery, iron, and salt. They cut down more forests to provide wood for
monumental architecture, first for the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto, but also later for other
cities and castle towns throughout the archipelago.^43 All of this resulted in dramatic changes to
the landscape. An innovative study of old paintings by Ogura Jun’ichi shows that many of the
mountains around Kyoto were essentially denuded of trees by late Muromachi or early Edo
times.^44
How we evaluate human interventions in nature depends on our perspective. If one places
value on a pristine natural environment, then all interventions are by definition bad. Even from
a parochial, human- centered perspective, some activities had very negative consequences.
Cutting down trees led to erosion and flooding, as well as local climate change. Urbanization
resulted in the pollution of ground water and rivers by human waste.^45 Overall, however, it is
possible to view most interventions positively, as adaptations that were intended to, and did,
benefit society.
Over time, Japanese society came to actively manage—as opposed to merely exploit—nature,
and in the process of doing so became more resilient.^46 The notion of resilience has been the focus
of several recent studies of the medieval and early modern periods. In one example, Philip C.
Brown studied riparian works in what is now Niigata prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast, an area
highly prone to flooding. According to Brown, tireless and creative efforts by local villagers and
daimyo resulted in better flood control, more stable conditions of life and work, and expansion
of arable land and production during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.^47 Another example