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The Lost Wolves of Japan (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books), by Brett L. Walker
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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.
Grain farmers once worshiped 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, as seen on the island of Hokkaido. Through poisoning, hired hunters, and a bounty system, one of the archipelago's largest carnivores was systematically erased.
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."
- Sales Rank: #617035 in Books
- Published on: 2008-03-14
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x .79" w x 5.98" l, 1.22 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 360 pages
Review
"Well illustrated and stylishly written, The Lost Wolves of Japan is a wolf's-eye view of premodern Japanese culture and the modern state's drive for modernization. . . . an excellent book easily worth the time to read it. Well written and imaginatively illustrated, this monograph is as fascinating as it is timely."―Journal of Japanese Studies
"The Lost Wolves of Japan by the American historian Brett Walker features everything one should expect of a book on such a topic: high scholarship yet a good read; an intelligent selection of useful and―- in the West at least―- presumably seldom-seen illustrations; an author with a[n]. . . infectious enthusiasm for the subject."―International Zoo News
"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
Review
"A stunningly original book about the Japanese veneration and then extermination of wolves."―Alex Lichtenstein, Houston Chronicle
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
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
We need more wolves and fewer people
By Eoin
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.
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Hard to Swallow
By Dubrl.
We don’t always get the book we expect. I expected Walker’s book to be something like the 1880 classic “British Animals Extinct Within Historic Times”, in which J. E. Harting bemoans the disappearance “beyond recall” of wild boars, bears, and wolves. (He was wrong: wild boars are back in Great Britain, and there is talk of reintroducing the wolf.) In lively writing Harting describes the animals, their range and habits, humans’ wars against them, and accounts of both real and legendary last individuals. He never blames anyone but the British for wiping out their large animals.
Walker takes a different tack. Reading like a 1993 term paper for an environmental studies class, blame for the demise of Japanese wolves is laid almost entirely on the West. This relies on the easy answer that modern humans – and especially modern humans viewed as “technological” – are solely responsible for extinctions and other environmental catastrophes. And yet we know that pre-industrial societies, especially on islands, destroyed countless species. Island-like Australia began loosing its large animals as soon as humans arrived 50,000 years ago; animals on Hawaii, New Zealand, and other Pacific Islands were driven to extinction by Polynesians, Melanesians, and other peoples; most large British animals were wiped out during the Neolithic Era, and nearly all of the rest before the Middle Ages had passed.
Comparing Britain and Japan would be interesting – the British, living on an archipelago slightly smaller than Japan, and with less rugged terrain, were able to wipe out their wolves more than a century before the Japanese managed to kill off theirs. But Walker makes no mention of any other extinctions, and again takes the easy route of complaining about the “progress” that took Japan’s top predators. In fact, wolves weren’t Japan’s top predators – tigers and leopards were. And today, well into the 21st Century, tigers and leopards persist almost with sight of Hokkaido, just across the Sea of Japan in Russia. Why don’t they live in Japan? They don’t live in Japan because the early Japanese, or more likely the ancestors of the Ainu, either directly or indirectly killed every last one. That was long before the utilization of anti-predator strychnine and industrial cattle ranching.
Walker almost addresses the dearth of wildness in pre-industrial Japan. He speculates that Japan’s crows – the large-billed crow and the carrion crow – might have followed wolf packs, or led them to their prey. Bernd Heinrich has shown how ravens might do that, and how there might be something to the traditional association between ravens and wolves. But that association has never been attributed to smaller crows, and Walker’s speculation seems wishful thinking. Regardless, his musings acknowledge that ravens are rare in Japan, even though they are plentiful just to the north, and in relative wilderness of Asia, Africa, and North America that lie in latitudes far south of Japan’s. As with the tiger and leopard there seems to be no reason for ravens not to live in Japan, other than a lack of wild spaces and uninviting humans.
Another suggestion of a denuded, pre-industrial Japan is Walker’s search for the true identity of the Japanese wolf – was it a feral dog? But here again the analysis is irksome and does nothing to convince the reader. The best example in history of a dog that took on a truly wild state is the Australian dingo. But the dingo is mentioned only once, in passing.
Much of the book is devoted to the Japanese reverence for the wolf, which also paints a strange picture. The famously insular Japanese abandoned a sacred animal simply because the West didn’t care for wolves? Why didn’t they also adopt Christianity, if they were so bent on imitating the West? Yes, the Japanese adopted Western ways and technology during the Meiji era, but there is no doubt that they picked and chose what they thought appropriate.
And here again we can compare environmental ideals in Japan and the West. While the simplistic take is that the West is single-handedly destroying the planet, in the case of preserving mega fauna – and in particular predators – the West actually seems ahead. Wolves are returning to parts of Europe where they’d been extinct for centuries. Wolves have been reintroduced to the American West and even into North Carolina. Yes, these reintroductions are opposed by many, but significant enthusiasm for wolves among the entire population has made the reintroductions possible. And the century-long rural depopulation that came with industrial agriculture and industrial ranching provided enough open space.
Japan is also experiencing rural depopulation. The Japanese could reintroduce wolves any time they want, and yet they haven’t bothered. If their reverence for nature is so great, why not take it a step further, and reintroduce globally threatened tigers and leopards? Again, it seems the Japanese are essentially shrugging at the loss of large animals, and it’s hard to imagine that only a few generations ago they thought any differently.
This is not to single out the Japanese as any more anti-environment than most societies throughout history, but it shows that the simplistic tale of the West as the sole enemy of the planet is not backed up by facts. Unfortunately, it seems that “The Lost Wolves of Japan” relies on this discredited idea.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Another View
By Mokadi Jook
If you are interested in wolves, the mechanics of extinction, or the relationship of the Japanese people to the environment, this is a fascinating read. The spiritual and cultural relationship between the Japanese wolf and the Japanese people is explored in this well-written volume. Illustrations enhance the text, and the author's own experiences with wolves in the American west are relevant and provide a contrast to his experiences researching the history of the disappearance of wolves and wild dogs in Japan.
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