4/1/2023 0 Comments Brett walker frontierAs anyone involved in discussions of energy knows, nuclear power is one of the sources of energy that will certainly alleviate a lot of greenhouse emissions from the planet. To his credit, I’d say it’s a complicated issue. So in a political, cronyistic sense, it’s not surprising that he would be so supportive of nuclear power. He has very cozy ties with that industry in Japan. Prime Minister Abe is a tricky one because he really cut his teeth in the nuclear industry. What are your thoughts on the government returning to some very environmentally dangerous practices? In recent years, Japanese Prime Minister Shinz ō Abe has stated his desire to reopen Japan’s nuclear power plants despite how devastating the Fukushima disaster was. These are landscapes that persist in one form or another, and visiting those is an important part of environmental history. One of the nice things about researching environmental history is it’s a very material subject and not very abstract. I saw areas where wolves had once lived, as well as the animals wolves interacted with that are currently there. Afterwards, they let me go to Japan with the same funding, so instead of the archives, I went to all these upland remote villages. In my case, it was fun because I originally had slated funding to go to Japan to work in archives, but I asked my dean if I could use the money to work with wolf biologists in Yellowstone. It’s kind of a classic second-book project because you get to explore something a little closer to your heart. Can you talk about what it was like to research that topic and go around the wolf villages? One of your books is The Lost Wolves of Japan. So it was those comparative elements that drew my attention to the environment. When I began looking into Ainu more carefully, I noticed that a lot of the same environmental changes that affected Native Americans - like the importation of smallpox - also affected the Ainu. So when I began studying the Ainu people a little bit, it was pretty natural that I would draw comparisons between the Ainu and the Native Americans of the United States. There was wild country, snow in the winter skiing was good - it reminded me of home. When I first traveled in Japan, I lived in the northern island of Hokkaido, and it fascinated me how much it reminded me of living in the western part of the United States. I went to a liberal arts college as well, and as I began researching the environment for graduate school, that was when I really began looking into environmental topics. I traveled around Japan and became very interested in it. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.īetween your specialties in Japanese and environmental history, which interest did you pick up first? Walker gave a talk on the issue Thursday afternoon in Craig Lecture Hall. Most recently, Walker has been studying the concerns of asbestos poisoning following the Fukushima triple disaster in 2011, when a tsunami led to the meltdown of the area’s major power plant and raised many questions about the safety of nuclear plants in Japan. Walker has written books on a number of topics in Japan such as the indigenous Ainu people, the disappearance of Japanese wolves in the last century and the history of Japan’s industrial-caused diseases. After graduating from the College of Idaho in 1989, Walker spent several years traveling and studying Japan before earning his doctorate in Japanese History from the University of Oregon. Brett Walker is a Regents Professor of History at Montana State University with expertise in Japanese health and medicine and its environmental history.
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