Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the potentials and limitations of writing a history of early modern knowledge, technology, and environmental transformation through 19th century Japan's experience with the globally connected expansion of whaling frontiers.

Paper long abstract:

1858 had started out as an exciting year for Nakahama Manjirō. The Tokugawa government of Japan had finally responded to his petitions and dispatched the former fisherman to the Oyashio current off Hokkaido. There, he was to catch whales with methods only foreigners had practiced off the shores of Japan. Equipped with a Russian-style schooner, the latest spoils of Japanese espionage, the former castaway who once served on an American vessel, was to open a new, Oceanic frontier for Japanese whaling, in order to counteract the steady decline in domestic catch. The mission of tapping into a new, and, for the Japanese sailors, completely unfamiliar environment, however, ended with a near-havoc in the Philippine Sea.

This attempt at technological modernization stood in a longer perspective of an expanding maritime resource base. Since the 18th century, magistrates of Izu Province had invited expert whalers to attempt the introduction of whaling in the region, both to accommodate growing demand in whale products and in response to signs of depletion in older whaling grounds. Just like Atlantic whaling shifted to ever-new frontiers, growing whale catches in the Pacific necessitated improved technologies and new concepts for maritime knowledge, long before the scramble on the open sea.

This paper explores the potentials and limitations of writing a history of early modern knowledge, technology, and environmental transformation through the globally connected experience of whales. While historical ecosystems are hard to reconstruct, the reduced activity of whales as nutrient transporters from the deep sea to shallow layers has affected the abundance of other species. Accordingly, this study locates the origins of the Anthropocene far beyond the discovery of fossil fuels, as technological progress and frontier expansion appear as inevitable responses to commercialization and resource depletion. Thus, historicizing pelagic ecosystems can shed new light on the causations of political change in allegedly 'secluded' Tokugawa Japan, and raise new questions regarding Japan's imperial departure to the Pacific.