Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Naoko Shimazu, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and Yale-NUS College, Singapore

ABSTRACT

From around the late 1960s Japanese antipollution and environmental activists began to look beyond the boundaries of their archipelago in search of allies and environmental knowledge. In the process they became involved in numerous mobilizations for victims of industrial pollution and natural degradation in East Asia and elsewhere, contributing to the development of the nascent global environmental movement. Crossing borders empowered these activists to challenge the developmentalist agenda of their country, to address the environmental impact of Japan’s economic expansion into East Asia, and to advocate a globalist yet locally-rooted perspective often greatly at odds with the logic of advanced, multinational capital, and the nation-states that supported it. In this presentation I investigate the history of transnational environmental activism in contemporary Japan, with particular reference to movements between Japanese groups and those in Northeast and Southeast Asia. I suggest that Japanese activists’ “environmental injustice paradigm” played a central role in motivating their transnational activities in Asia and beyond.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Simon Avenell is Professor in the School of Culture, History, and Language and Associate Dean (Higher Degrees by Research) in the College of Asia and the Pacific at Australian National University (ANU). He specializes in modern Japanese history, social movements, civil society, environmental history, and transnational history. His work has been published in major Japan and area studies journals such as The Journal of Japanese Studies, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Social Science Japan Journal, Environmental History and Modern Asian Studies. He has three single-authored books: Making Japanese Citizens: Civil Society and the Mythology of the Shimin in Postwar Japan (University of California, 2010) a history of civic thought, social activism, and civil society in postwar Japan; Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), an exploration of Japanese activists role in environmental movements worldwide from the 1960s; and Asia and Postwar Japan: Deimperialization, Civic Activism, and National Identity (Harvard, 2022), which traces Japan’s complicated reengagement with Asia after colonial empire and militarism. From 2014 to 2016 he served as director of the ANU Japan Institute. He is currently editing two volumes, one on postwar Japanese history and the other (with Akihiro Ogawa) on civil society in Japan.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the webinar.