Climate and environment in history38 On which, see William Atwell, “Volcanism and Short- Term Climatic Change in East Asian and World
History, ca. 1200–1699.” As the title indicates, this seminal article covers much more than Japan.
39 Nakatsuka Takeshi, “Kikō hendō to rekishigaku,” 56–67.
40 Yoshinari Kawamura, “Late Pleistocene to Holocene Mammalian Faunal Succession in the Japanese
Islands, with Comments on the Late Quaternary Extinctions”; Christopher J. Norton et al.,
“The Nature of Megafaunal Extinctions during the MIS 3–2 Transition in Japan.” The most recent
research tends to downplay the role of human hunting in Japanese mammalian extinctions: Akira
Iwase et al., “Further Study on the Late Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinction in the Japanese
Archipelago.”
41 On intentionally introduced plants, see Hoshikawa Kiyochika, Saibai shokubutsu no kigen to denpa. On
invasive weeds, see Asai Yasuhiro, Midori no shinnyūsha tachi: Kika shokubutsu no hanashi, 46–49. On live-
stock and other animals, see Matsui Akira, Dōbutsu kōkogaku.
42 Note, however, that population levels were largely static during the Nara and Heian periods, while
organizational capabilities may also have temporarily declined as the state became less centralized from
Heian times. On population trends, see William Wayne Farris, Daily Life and Demographics in Ancient
Japan, and Japan’s Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, and Warfare in a Transformative Age.
43 On deforestation, see Conrad Totman, The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial Japan, 9–33, and
Totman, Japan: An Environmental History, chapters 3–5, passim.
44 See Ogura Jun’ichi, Ezu kara yomitoku hito to keikan no rekishi.
45 Pollution: Kawasumi, “Settlement Patterns,” 49, 54–55.
46 The shift from exploitation to active management is a central theme in Conrad Totman’s various books.
Resilience is a concept borrowed from ecology; it refers to the ability of a system to resist disturbance.
See Brian Walker and David Salt, Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing
World.
47 Philip C. Brown, “Floods, Drainage, and River Projects in Early Modern Japan: Civil Engineering and
the Foundations of Resilience.”
48 Osamu Saito, “Climate, Famine, and Population in Japanese History: A Long- Term Perspective.” A
similar argument, by the way, appears in Geoffrey Parker’s recent book, Global Crisis: War, Climate
Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. Parker claims that Japan was unique among major states
in the northern hemisphere in successfully negotiating the climatic challenges of the Little Ice Age. He
ascribes Japan’s success to demographic factors (initial “underpopulation,” and later various negative
and positive brakes on fertility) and to good government policy (strong social controls, encouragement
of economic growth, and avoidance of costly foreign entanglements).
49 Shizuyo Sano, “Traditional Use of Resources and Management of Littoral Environments at Lake
Biwa.”
50 K. Takeuchi et al., Satoyama: The Traditional Rural Landscape of Japan. Also see Ōtsuka Masahiko, “Sekai
no naka de no Nihon no mori to satoyama,” and the many chapters on this topic in Yumoto Takakazu,
ed., Shirīzu Nihon rettō no sanman gosen nen.
51 On public health in Edo, see Susan B. Hanley, Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Forgotten Legacy,
104–128.
52 Kitō Hiroshi, Kankyō senshinkoku, Edo, especially 190–208. Many of the same points are made for Japan
as a whole in Hanley, Everyday Things, 51–76.
53 Kitō, Kankyō senshinkoku, 212–216.
54 On population history in this period, see Kitō Hiroshi, Jinkō kara yomu Nihon no rekishi. The static
national average disguises significant regional variation.
55 Totman, The Green Archipelago.
56 John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World, 148–192;
Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, 294–306.
57 Meteorological disasters from the tenth to sixteenth century: Fujiki Hisashi, Nihon chūsei kishō saigaishi
nenpyō kō: 10 kara 16 seiki no kaze, mizu, hideri, chūgai, kyōsaku, kikin, ekibyō no jōhō. Weather conditions
in the eleventh through sixteenth centuries: Mizukoshi Mitsuharu, Kokiroku ni yoru 11 seiki no tenkō
kiroku and other volumes in the same series (see References for details).
58 Taisaku Komeie, “Landscapes in Literature and Painting,” 223–230.
59 See Akihiro Kinda and Kazuhiro Uesugi, “Landscapes and Maps.”
60 Also see Komeie, “Landscapes in Literature and Painting,” 230–234.
61 See plates 11 and 12 of Matsui Akira, Kankyō kōkogaku.
62 Kitahara Itoko et al., Nihon rekishi kasai jiten.