Nature : Mono

This episode features an interview with Dr. Christine Marran, author of Ecology Without Culture: Aesthetics for a Toxic World (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). In our talk, we discuss how the ocean factors into the methyl-mercury poisoning of the Shiranui Sea and Ishimure Michiko’s literature. We discuss key concepts explored in Ecology Without Culture, including the “biotrope” and “obligate storytelling.”

This episode features an interview with Dr. Sujung Kim, author of Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020). In our talk, we discuss how the oceanic deity Shinra Myōjin ties together medieval Japan, China, and the Korean kingdoms into a network that challenges traditional narratives of Buddhism’s movement across East Asia. We discuss the reconceptualization of space that Kim identifies as the East Asian Mediterranean—an transnational space of sea and land that allows us to rethink historical agency.

This episode features an interview with Daryl Maude, Ph.D. Candidate in the East Asian Languages and Cultures Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Daryl is the translator of Shinjo Ikuo’s “Male Sexuality in the Colony: On Toyokawa Zen’ichi’s Searchlight,” which is included in the edited volume Beyond Imperial Aesthetics: Theories of Art and Politics in East Asia, as well as the poetry of Yamanokuchi Baku. Daryl reads his translation of Takara Ben’s poem “Cebu Sea,” and we discuss Takara’s oceanic poetics and what they mean for various registers of comparison between Okinawa and Japan, and the Pacific world.

This episode features an interview with Dr. Aike Rots, principal researcher of the Whales of Power project and author of Shinto, Nature and Ideology in Contemporary Japan: Making Sacred Forests (Bloomsbury Press, 2017). In our talk, we discuss the transnational scope of the Whales of Power project, and how it looks to reframe Religious Studies through a comparative paradigm opened up by the sea.

This episode features an interview with Dr. C. Anne Claus, author of Drawing the Sea Near: Satoumi and Coral Reef Conservation in Okinawa (University of Minnesota Press, 2020). In our talk, we discuss the role of the sea in Environmental Anthropology and how Dr. Claus’ fieldwork in Shiraho on the Okinawa island of Ishigaki turned into a book about conceptual changes in the practice of conservation.

This episode features an interview with Dr. Jakobina K. Arch, author of Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan (University of Washington Press, 2018). In our talk, we discuss Dr. Arch’s interest in telling the early modern oceanic history Tokugawa era Japan. We discuss why Japan’s oceans have often been left out of the telling of its history, and contemplate the limits of recounting history from a nonhuman perspective.

Is the Ocean the next frontier for humanities research? What happens if we see the ocean as a site of connectivity, rather than one of separation? This episode offers a short introduction to Season One: Oceanic Japan.