B.L. Batten
Sources and prospects for further study
I conclude with a brief review of sources and prospects for further study. For purposes of classi-
fication, historians often divide their source material into “primary” and “secondary” categories.
Primary sources are written materials roughly contemporaneous with the events being studied;
secondary sources are subsequent analyses or descriptions by historians (or others). This crude
distinction holds for environmental history, but only if we substantially expand the meaning of
“primary source” to include more than just written records.
True, traditional primary sources are of immense value to the environmental historian. As we
have seen, the Japanese historical record provides voluminous evidence of weather conditions,
disasters, and other occurrences. Many of the originally scattered records, particularly those
relating to weather, have recently been compiled for ease of use.^57 In addition to such “factual”
sources, literary works also include much relevant information, for example, descriptions of
natural scenery.^58
Another type of primary source is visual material such as maps and paintings. Ancient and
medieval maps of shōen (estates) have been used to reconstruct historical landscapes.^59 So have
paintings, as we saw earlier in connection with the research of Ogura Jun’ichi.^60 Paintings also
provide information on daily life in its spatial or environmental context. Particularly worthy of
mention are the numerous emakimono or picture scrolls surviving from classical and medieval
times. Although some are fanciful, even these may contain seeds of truth. For example, the
twelfth- century Hell Scroll (Jigoku zōji) in the Nara National Museum shows a dog gnawing on
a human corpse; examples of canine tooth marks on human bones are also known from the
archaeological record.^61
The mention of archaeology brings us to another type of “primary source”: physical evid-
ence. We have already seen how pollen, tree rings, and lake varves are used to reconstruct past
climatic conditions, and how archaeology provides evidence about ancient volcanic eruptions,
earthquakes, floods, and their effects. In addition, human bones or teeth can tell us much about
nutrition and health, and excavated artifacts and structures provide direct information about
how people lived at the place and time in question. More examples could be cited, but the point
is clear: environmental historians can and should make use of more than just traditional histor-
ical, or even visual, sources.
What about the secondary or scholarly literature? Not surprisingly, it is scattered among
many disciplines: not just history, but also (to list only the most relevant) archaeology, biology,
ecology, geography, climatology, and paleoclimatology. Scholars in all of these fields publish in
their own specialized journals. (Outside the discipline of history, and to a lesser extent archae-
ology, book- length studies are rare.) Although foreign scholars have also been active (see the
notes to this chapter), most studies are, of course, by Japanese. Fortunately for those of us in the
English- speaking world, Japanese scientists publish their important research results in inter-
national journals, in English. A search for appropriate English keywords on Web of Science or
the like, therefore, will produce useful results from journals in most of the above fields.
What is true for Japanese scientists is not true for Japanese historians and archaeologists, so it
is necessary to read their work in Japanese. For some topics, summaries of current knowledge can
be found in dictionaries, such as the excellent one on historical disasters by Kitahara Itoko and
colleagues.^62 That said, there is no way around reading books and articles. It is impossible to
provide a comprehensive guide here, so I will simply mention three indispensable multivolume
works.^63 The first is the 15-volume Kōza: Bunmei to kankyō (Essays on Civilization and the
Environment), published by Asakura Shoten in 1995–1996 under the auspices of scholars at the
International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto.^64 This ambitious set