Environmental Pollution and Community Rebuilding in Modern Japan

This book describes how modern industry affected people in Japan and their communities by polluting their living environment with toxic emissions. It also shows how the populace endeavored not only to restore their once-clean environment but also to rebuild communities that had been damaged by pollution and its accompanying effects.

Environmental pollution is usually referred to in Japan as kogai, public damage, meaning that such pollution not only harms the physical environmentair, water, soil, and the human bodybut also destroys the social and personal relationships in the polluted area. Those people who took action recognized that industrial and economic development had been given the highest national priority even at the cost of their health and welfare. In this sense, anti-kogai movements led them to alternative community development and to rethinking what kind of environment and community they wanted.

This book also explores the efforts driven byresidents in several parts of Japan after the middle of the twentieth century and the endeavors of museums and archives as a memorial to those who suffered from the pollution and for the prospect of a better society with a good environment.

Provides a concrete picture of the severity of the effect environmental pollution had on people in some areas of Japan Examines residents' efforts to restore the environment and communities damaged by pollution Underlines the roles of an environmental pollution museum and archival center for rebuilding communities

Auteur
Masafumi Yokemoto, Osaka Metropolitan University
Miho Hayashi, Foundation for Environmental Rehabilitation and Redevelopment of Mizushima
Mayuko Shimizu, Ryukoku University
Keiji Fujiyoshi, Otemon Gakuin University

Contenu

A Brief History of Environmental Pollution in Japan.- Ashio Copper Mine Mineral Pollution Incident: The Starting Point of Environmental Pollution History in Japan.- Regeneration of Pollution-devastated Areas Through Alternative Food Networks: A Case Study of Organic Farming by Minamata Disease Patients and Their Supporters.- How Do We Cope with Pollution, a Form of Environmental Damage? Learning from a Community Devastated by Itai-itai Disease.- Air Pollution Lawsuit and Community Development for Environmental Regeneration: The Case of Mizushima District in Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture.- Victims of Drug-Induced Suffering: Their Movement and its Research Archives.- Health Damage and Politics of Kanemi Oil Poisoning: Industrial Food Pollution and the Political Void.- Damage Relief and Reconstruction Policy in the Wake of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident.- Network of Museums and Archival Centers for Remembering Environmental Pollution.