Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper explores how workers, trade unions, and labor scientists generated knowledge about how the air in mineral mines affected workers’ health. This knowledge enabled the Japanese state to redefine citizenship, transform from an empire into a nation-state, and reconceptualize public welfare.

Paper long abstract

Silica, as a material, played an important role in shaping Japan’s postwar history. By inhaling silica-rich dust during the excavation of minerals such as copper and coal, Japanese mine workers absorbed silica into their bodies, leading to pathological changes in their once-healthy lungs and causing irreversible damage to their health. For a long time in Japan, however, the occupational disease caused by silica-laden air—silicosis—received little attention from either corporations or the state. Workers endured the disease, lived with its effects, and often died miserable deaths, slowly suffocating from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century.

In 1954, Japan enacted its first law to protect workers suffering from silicosis, prompted initially by pressure from the trade union at the Ashio Copper Mine, the largest copper mine in the country. Who made the invisible traces of silica in mine air visible? At a time when copper prices had fallen and the postwar government no longer regarded copper as a strategic mineral, how did copper workers succeed in making their health concerns a national priority? This paper examines how workers, trade unions, labor scientists, and medical specialists rendered silica-laden air and its effects on the human body visible. It further argues that postwar workers’ movements around occupational disease redefined the meaning of citizenship, redrew the political boundaries of Japan as a nation-state, and reshaped the country’s understanding of the welfare state.