Waiting for Wolves in Japan: An Anthropological Study of People-Wildlife Relations

by John Knight

Basing this work on his ethnographic fieldwork in mountain villages of Japan's Kii Peninsula in the late 1980s (for a doctoral thesis submitted in 1992 to the London School of Economics), Knight (Queens U. Belfast) examines an issue relevant to any locale debating whether to re-introduce wolves. His analysis draws on the observation from structural

Genres: Japan, Animals, Anthropology, Wolves, Nature, Nonfiction

312 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 2003

Reviews

[Alison Zak · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a FANTASTIC book! It's not just about wolves. There are chapters for different kinds of wildlife that people in rural Japan encounter on an increasingly frequent and problematic basis. The importance of culture is often overlooked in what we tend to think of (or are forced to justify) as more ecologically based conservation decisions. I am a grad student, writing my thesis on the topic of ethnoprimatology and this book was immensely valuable!