Overview

Japan today defends its controversial whaling expeditions by invoking tradition-but what was the historical reality? In examining the techniques and impacts of whaling during the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), Jakobina Arch shows that the organized, shore-based whaling that first developed during these years bore little resemblance to modern Japanese whaling. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from whaling ledgers to recipe books and gravestones for fetal whales, she traces how the images of whales and by-products of commercial whaling were woven into the lives of people throughout Japan. Economically, Pacific Ocean resources were central in supporting the expanding Tokugawa state. In this vivid and nuanced study of how the Japanese people brought whales ashore during the Tokugawa period, Arch makes important contributions to both environmental and Japanese history by connecting Japanese whaling to marine environmental history in the Pacific, including the devastating impact of American whaling in the nineteenth century.

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9780295743295

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Arch's fascinating study is more than an interdisciplinary maritime history. . . . Whales and whaling, here, wed the historical to the contemporary, enhancing knowledge of Japanese history while historizing contemporary controversies, including the invented tradition of Japanese as nature-loving people spiritually connected to their natural world. * Japan Studies Review * Bringing Whales Ashore is not only an important volume but also a provocative one. Jakobina Arch has produced (in her first book, no less) one of those rare and wonderful pieces of research that recasts the historical landscape (or, in this case, seascape) while stimulating debate and raising challenging new questions. * Monumenta Nipponica * What is the real history of whaling in Japan? Is it first and foremost a story about the continuation of a centuries old cultural tradition? And how likely is it that the whaling Japan continues to do in the name of scientific research under IWC rules will validate a long-standing dedication to the sustainable use of whales for food? . . . Jakobina Arch . . . provide[s] for the first time convincing answers to these and other questions in Bringing Whales Ashore. -- Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith * Environment, Law, and History *

What is the real history of whaling in Japan? Is it first and foremost a story about the continuation of a centuries old cultural tradition? And how likely is it that the whaling Japan continues to do in the name of scientific research under IWC rules will validate a long-standing dedication to the sustainable use of whales for food? . . . Jakobina Arch . . . provide[s] for the first time convincing answers to these and other questions in Bringing Whales Ashore. -- Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith * Environment, Law, and History *

Author Information

Jakobina K. Arch is assistant professor of history at Whitman College.

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