Japanese History in Hydrological Dimensions.
BOOK CHAPTER IN PRODUCTION “Japanese History in Hydrological Dimensions.” In Histories and Society of the Hydrosphere. Duara, Prasenjit, and Wescoat, James (eds.). Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, Prospectively 2026. Human history is embedded in hydrological cycles that interlink terrestrial, atmospheric and oceanic ecologies. In the twenty-first century, change in climatic patterns is no longer perceived […]
“Volumetric sovereignty: Power and Hydrological Cycles in the History of Northeast Asia” (working title)
Book project in development. The project Volumetric sovereignty: Power and Hydrological Cycles in the History of Northeast Asia (working title) explores the role of maritime and atmospheric environments in the formation of commercial and political practices in Northeast Asia. Foregrounding sub-state actors navigating global currents in economy, politics, and science since the early modern period, […]
The Search for Modern Micronesia––Star-Shaped Genealogies of a Colonial Past
What is the role of Oceania in the history of the Japanese Empire? Historians have long sought to write sea and islands into the empire, keeping the apparently inconvertible encoding of Indigenous memory at arm’s length. This contribution inverts such hierarchies by writing Japan into the framework of Oceanian history instead. Centred on the life […]
Synthetic Nitrogen and the Dependencies of Modern Growth: Global Japan in the Creation of Unsustainable Infrastructures, 1700 to present.
Ongoing research project. Synthetic fertilizers are essential ingredients of modern agrarian growth, but their application in industrial agriculture comes at social and ecological costs. A substance emitted in excess of “planetary boundaries” at present, synthetic nitrogen endangers aquatic ecosystems and exacerbates global warming. Just like fossil fuels, synthetic nitrogen today represents both an essential propellant […]
The Evolution of Kappa, or: Science and Environmental Change in the History of a Fictive Species in Japan
Ongoing research project. Preliminary version presented at the conference, Biodiversity at a Crossroads: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biodiversity Change across Asia, Past and Present, National University of Singapore, July 13–14, 2023. Japan’s “modern” revolution instigated a reconfiguration of environmental knowledge, agrarian practice, and spiritual meaning. It also restructured landscapes according to new, scientifically underpinned rationalities. This contribution […]
“Pictograms and Knot-Ropes: Administrative Records in the Periphery of Early Modern Ryukyu.”
Ongoing research project. Under the early modern Ryukyu Kingdom, an island state ambiguously affiliated with both Tokugawa Japan and Qing China, the peasants of outlying islands were subject to heavy taxation. After the subjection of Ryukyu by Satsuma, several levels of administration made claims to the archipelago’s resources. In the Yaeyama Islands off Taiwan, head […]