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Paper short abstract

What makes domestic environments in Japan toxic or inhabitable and for whom? Rather than treating hoarding primarily as a psychological pathology, the paper approaches it as a material and environmental condition that unfolds within particular architectural, climatic, and temporal contexts.

Paper long abstract

This paper takes the notion of the environment indoors and asks: What makes domestic environments in Japan toxic or inhabitable and for whom? Drawing on a decade of research on hoarding in Japan and recent work on mould in anthropology, human geography and environmental humanities, it examines the specific configurations through which hoarding becomes entangled with indoor ecologies. Rather than treating hoarding primarily as a psychological pathology, the paper approaches it as a material and environmental condition that unfolds within particular architectural, climatic, and temporal contexts.

Japanese dwellings, characterised by wood-based construction, and the widespread use of electric heating in winter and air-conditioning during the humid summers, provide especially favourable conditions for the growth of mould and the proliferation of vermin. In hoarding cases, accumulated objects do not merely crowd living space but actively reshape domestic environments. Clutter creates sheltered niches for rats and cockroaches and obscures the gradual spread of mould along walls, floors, and structural elements, often rendering environmental deterioration difficult to detect until it becomes advanced.

Seasonal rhythms, patterns of heating and ventilation, and the slow accretion of objects produce environments in which biological processes and human routines become tightly interwoven. How do inhabitants contain, fight, or resign themselves to their more-than-human cohabitants? In some cases, residents actively attempt to share space with more-than-human cohabitants, while in others they seek to manage infestations through chemical agents. How, then, are the chemical agents used to control mould infestations experienced as creating other forms of toxicities? I argue that domestic environments offer a critical lens through which to understand how environmental harm is lived, managed, and endured, revealing the ethical and political challenges of inhabiting environmental futures that are already saturated by the residues of the past.