The Nature of the Beasts

Ian Jared Miller teaches Japanese history at Harvard University.

Figures

Foreword by Harriet Ritvo

Acknowledgements

Note on Transliteration



INTRODUCTION

Japan’s Ecological Modernity



I. Animals in the Anthropocene

II. Ecological Modernity in Japan

III. The Natural World as Exhibition



PART ONE

The Nature of Civilization



CHAPTER ONE:

Japan’s Animal Kingdom: The Origins of Ecological Modernity and the Birth of the Zoo



I.  Bringing Politics to Life

II.  Sorting Animals Out in Meiji Japan

III.  Animals in the Exhibitionary Complex

IV.  The Ueno Zoo

V. Ishikawa Chiyomatsu and the Evolution of Exhibition

VI. Bigot’s Japan



CHAPTER TWO:

The Dreamlife of Imperialism: Commerce, Conquest, and the Naturalization of Ecological Modernity



I. The Dreamlife of Empire

II. The Nature of Empire

III. Nature Behind Glass

IV. Backstage at the Zoo

V. The Illusion of Liberty

VI. Imperial Trophies

VII. Imperial Nature



PART TWO

The Culture of Total War



CHAPTER THREE:

Military Animals: The Zoological Gardens and the Culture of Total War



I. Military Animals

II. Mobilizing the Animal World

III. The Eye of the Tiger

IV. Animal Soldiers

V. Horse Power



CHAPTER FOUR: 

The Great Zoo Massacre



I. Tokyo, 1943

II. A Strange Sort of Ceremony

III. Mass-Mediated Sacrifice

IV. The Taxonomy of a Massacre

V. The Killing Floor

VI. And Then There Were Two



PART THREE

After Empire



CHAPTER FIVE: 

The Children’s Zoo: Elephant Ambassadors and Other Creatures of the Allied Occupation



I. Bambi Goes to Tokyo

II. Empire After Empire

III. Neo-Colonial Potlatch

IV. “Animal Kindergarten”

V. Occupied Japan’s Elephant Mania

VI. Elephant Ambassadors



CHAPTER SIX: 

Pandas in the Anthropocene: Japan’s “Panda Boom” and the Limits of Ecological Modernity



I. The “Panda Boom”

II. The Science of Charisma

III. Panda Diplomacy

IV. “Living Stuffed Animals”

V. The Biotechnology of Cute



EPILOGUE: 

The Sorrows of Ecological Modernity



Notes

Bibliography

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