Three protest waves in Japanese environmentalism: Ashio, Minamata, and Fukushima

My talk will discuss the history of environmentalism in Japan from the vantagepoint of three famous protest waves - those centering on the pollution from the Ashio mine more than a century ago, the mercury poisoning of Minamata Bay in postwar Japan, and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. I will highlight how each protest wave impacted on the evolution of Japanese environmentalism, with a particular focus on what happens to a movement in the wake of a protest wave and on how each new protest wave refers back to,  reappropriates and thereby keeps alive the legacy of earlier protests.

Bio: Carl Cassegård is Professor of Sociology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His current research concerns the environmental movement, critical theory and eco-Marxism, and his books include Post-Apocalyptic Environmentalism: The Green Movement in Times of Catastrophe (co-written with Håkan Thörn, 2022), Toward a Critical Theory of Nature: Capital, Ecology, and Dialectics (2021), Climate Action in a Globalizing World (co-edited 2017), and Youth Movements, Trauma and Alternative Space in Contemporary Japan (2014).

This event is part of the Perspective Asia Lecture Series.