The Lost Wolves of Japan (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books) [Hardcover]

Brett L. Walker (Author), William Cronon (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2005 | Series: Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books

Many Japanese once revered the wolf as Oguchi no Magami, or Large-Mouthed Pure God, but as Japan began its modern transformation wolves lost their otherworldly status and became noxious animals that needed to be killed. By 1905 they had disappeared from the country. In this spirited and absorbing narrative, Brett Walker takes a deep look at the scientific, cultural, and environmental dimensions of wolf extinction in Japan and tracks changing attitudes toward nature through Japan's long history. He discusses prominent Japanese naturalists, their theories of wolf extinction, and the development of Japan's scientific discipline of ecology, looking at how nation-building and industrialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reconfigured relationships with the natural world in ways that led to the extinction of wolves.Grain farmers once worshipped wolves at shrines and left food offerings near their dens, beseeching the elusive canine to protect their crops from the sharp hooves and voracious appetites of wild boars and deer. Talismans and charms adorned with images of wolves protected against fire, disease, and other calamities and brought fertility to agrarian communities and to couples hoping to have children. The Ainu people believed that they were born from the union of a wolflike creature and a goddess. In the eighteenth century, wolves were seen as rabid man-killers in many parts of Japan. Highly ritualized wolf hunts were instigated to cleanse the landscape of what many considered as demons. By the nineteenth century, however, the destruction of wolves had become decidedly unceremonious.To contrast wolf killings in the decades before and after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Walker looks at killings on the island of Hokkaido. The systematic erasure of one of the archipelago's largest carnivores - through poisoning, hired hunters, and a bounty system - elevated humans to spiritual and actual mastery over a part of the natural world. The story of wolf extinction exposes the underside of Japan's modernization. Certain wolf scientists still camp out in Japan to listen for any trace of the elusive canines. The quiet they experience reminds us of the profound silence that awaits all humanity when, as the Japanese priest Kenko taught almost seven centuries ago, we 'look on fellow sentient creatures without feeling compassion'.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Lost Wolves of Japan draws not just on Japanese history, literature, folklore, taxonomy, and ecology, but on the author's personal experience and on relevant science and historiography in other parts of the world as well." William Cronon, University of Wisconsin, Madison "Walker has taken the seemingly obscure topic of Japanese wolves and their extinction and used it to illuminate Japanese history more broadly... he has addressed an issue directly related to the central human agenda of the 21st century, that of survival in a severely overburdened and rapidly deteriorating global biosystem." Conrad Totman, author of Preindustrial Korea and Japan in Environmental Perspective

From the Publisher

"The Lost Wolves of Japan is not just a history of the wolf in Japan, but is also about Montana (the author's home) and North America, about nature and wilderness, and about what it is to be human and animal." - Monumenta Nipponica

"Walker has written a well-researched book with a message to all who are interested not only in our representations of wolves but in human-nature relations in general." - American Historical Review

"This exquisite book provides an excellent introduction to the history of taxonomy and the development of ecological science throughout the world; it is also a wonderful examination of the human dimensions of wildlife in Japan... Highly recommended." - Choice

"Brett Walker may be the only true environmental historian among Japanologists publishing in English. Unlike other scholars who have written on environmental themes in Japanese history (this one included), Walker's work places him squarely in the company of the leading environmental historians and ecologists. . . . (He) has given us a fascinating study of wolves and humans in early modern and modern Japan. In doing so he has raised important questions about links between changes in national identity and views of nature. He has also challenged scholars of Japanese environmental history to go beyond Japanology to situate themselves in the company of scholars of environmental history in other regions of the globe." - Journal of East Asian Studies

"This book's particular brilliance lies in its ability to trace the contours of this absent presence, telling us the history of wolf annihilation while revealing the impossibility of fully recovering that history... This book's immense achievement is its elucidation of the problem of writing history where all elements - human and nonhuman, climatic and cultural - are continually reconfigured. . . . The Lost Wolves of Japan is not only compelling environmental history but a deeply intelligent meditation on the historicity of our environment." - Isis

"Few books offer as intricate a view into another culture's attitudes toward an animal's extinction and disappearing wilderness as The Lost Wolves of Japan. Eloquently written and rich with notes that make this book highly appropriate for undergraduate and graduate course . . . Lost Wolves shows not only the global influences on species extinction but also how the loss of wilderness and signature species such as the wolf are deeply situated within rich, human worlds of rituals, stories, and legends that are themselves disappearing." - Journal of the History of Biology

"Inventive and heartfelt, The Lost Wolves of Japan is the kind of book many historians declare they will write when they earn tenure. But it is easy to say that you will be bold in the future. Walker actually keeps the promise." - The Journal of Asian Studies

"[An] excellent book. . . . Walker provides a wide-ranging perspective on the interactions between human and wolf culture, drawing on historical, religious, ecological, political, ethnological, and anthropological data - mostly from original Japanese sources. He adds a personal narrative engagement with his topic which enlivens the text and tale. Moreover, he dares to consider the fate of Japan's wolves from not only a human historian's perspective, but from what he calls a 'wolf's-eye view' of history." - ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

"This is one of a small number of environmental historical studies of Japan available in English, and the skills of the author as a researcher and as a writer of prose accessible to specialist and layperson alike make it an attractive book indeed." - Asahi Shimbun

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 331 pages
• Publisher: University of Washington Press (July 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295984929
• ISBN-13: 978-0295984926
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,218,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars We need more wolves and fewer people February 26, 2013

By Eoin

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Great book. It places a cultural study of Japanese wolves in a carefully considered historical context from which the reader is allowed to draw some significant concerns about America's own treatment of wolves and exactly what that treatment implies about our national character (or lack of character) and our entire relationship with nature since our arrival on this continent. It is an informative and intriguing read even for those who don't think about the plight of wolves very often.