Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo (Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes)

Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes

by Ian Jared Miller

It is widely known that such Western institutions as the museum, the university, and the penitentiary shaped Japan’s emergence as a modern nation-state. Less commonly recognized is the role played by the distinctly hybrid institution—at once museum, laboratory, and prison—of the zoological garden. In this eye-opening study of Japan’s first modern zoo, Tokyo’s Ueno Imperial Zoological Gardens, opened in 1882, Ian Jared Miller offers a refreshingly unconventional narrative of Japan’s rapid modernization and changing relationship with the natural world. As the first zoological garden in the world not built under the sway of a Western imperial regime, the Ueno Zoo served not only as a staple attraction in the nation’s capital—an institutional marker of national accomplishment—but also as a site for the propagation of a new “natural” order that was scientifically verifiable and evolutionarily foreordained. As the Japanese empire grew, Ueno became one of the primary sites of imperialist spectacle, a microcosm of the empire that could be traveled in the course of a single day. The meaning of the zoo would change over the course of Imperial Japan’s unraveling and subsequent Allied occupation. Today it remains one of Japan’s most frequently visited places. But instead of empire in its classic political sense, it now bespeaks the ambivalent dominion of the human species over the natural environment, harkening back to its imperial roots even as it asks us to question our exploitation of the planet’s resources.

Genres: Japan, Japanese History, 19th Century, History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2012

Reviews

[s · Rating 4 out of 5]

a history of the ueno zoo, spanning its establishment in 1882 to the present, with an emphasis on japanese imperialism. its focus on "empire and exhibition"--or, how science/technology motivated by nationalism and imperialism translates to a broader public, especially children, was very interesting. it was about the animals themselves but also about the symbolic power of animals and human projections upon them. i would agree with blurbs that call this book an original and fresh take on japanese imperialism.

this book was much more engaging and thought-provoking than i thought it would be (lol). i found the framework of "ecological modernity" to be kind of forgetful, but the archival research and the narration of specific moments of zoo history were compelling (this may be how i feel about all history books though, the framework is usually whatever). the stand-out chapter is definitely the one on the zoo massacre of 1943, which was very difficult to read. a blurb describes this book as "compassionate," and i definitely felt that throughout the book, but mostly in this chapter. one of the animals who was killed as part of that massacre during the war as a martyr, an elephant named tonky, was fed poisoned potatoes. she was ordered to be killed but zookeepers were not allowed to use a rifle because the zoo was/is in such a dense metropolitan area and so the gunshot would have been heard by neighbors. despite being ordered to starve her to death, the zookeepers who raised and loved her would sneak her food and water. once it became apparent that was happening, city and military officials ordered to oversee her death and she was offered poisoned food for all to see. she knew the potatoes were poisoned and she threw them at the military officials and the reluctant zookeepers, never actually eating them. very, very sad, and a complicated thing to narrate, which i think the author navigates well. he does not treat the animals as "agents" because of the impossibility of "knowing" their interiority or their motivations, but he does treat with respect, i think, the actions we can discern and how they shaped the course of what was yet to come. so in that way, agents of a kind.

it blew me away just how rich and vast the archives of the zoo and the zoological society are (esp pre-1923 records, which survived the great kanto earthquake). so many pictures, so many memoirs, countless newspaper articles, and records of the deaths of animals down to the minute. and then i think of all the people--koreans, taiwanese, okinawans, pacific islanders, poor japanese people, countless others--swept into empire whose lives and deaths we will never know, whose lives did not merit even a fraction of that kind of record or regard. that tension is addressed in the book--as is the inherited systems of value we have around human and animal life--and it is that intense emotional and financial investment in the animals on the part of the nation-state and also its people that really animates the book. very interesting, would recommend to people in academia interested in environmental history, japanese imperialism, STS more broadly.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The chapter on the Great Zoo Massacre was fascinating but the rest of the book was never so focused and gripping

[AAA · Rating 3 out of 5]

如果不会说人话可以不必非要出书的。整本书都充斥着僵硬死板的学术语言，这种内容说实话你们同行在期刊上自己内部互相评审一下就够了！