Every foreign traveler in Japan is delighted by the verdant forest-shrouded mountains that thrust skyward from one end of the island chain to the other. The Japanese themselves are conscious of the lush green of their homeland, which they sometimes refer to as 'the green archipelago'. Yet, based on its fragile geography and centuries of extremely dense human occupation, Japan today should be an impoverished, slum-ridden, peasant society subsisting on a barren, eroded moonscape characterized by bald mountains and debris ...
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Every foreign traveler in Japan is delighted by the verdant forest-shrouded mountains that thrust skyward from one end of the island chain to the other. The Japanese themselves are conscious of the lush green of their homeland, which they sometimes refer to as 'the green archipelago'. Yet, based on its fragile geography and centuries of extremely dense human occupation, Japan today should be an impoverished, slum-ridden, peasant society subsisting on a barren, eroded moonscape characterized by bald mountains and debris-strewn lowlands. In fact, as Conrad Totman argues in this pathbreaking work based on prodigious research, this lush verdue is not a monument to nature's benevolence and Japanese aesthetic sensibilities, but the hard-earned result of generations of human toil that have converted the archipelago into one great forest preserve. Indeed, the author shows that until the late 1600s Japan was well on her way to ecological disaster due to exploitative forestry. During the Tokugawa period, however, an extraordinary change took place resulting in a system of 'regenerative forestry' that averted the devastation of Japan's forests. "The Green Archipelago" is the only major Western-language work on this subject and a landmark not only in Japanese history, but in the history of the environment.
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Add this copy of The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Pre-Industrial Japan to cart. $40.00, good condition, Sold by The Book Bin rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Salem, OR, UNITED STATES, published 1989 by University of California Press.
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Seller's Description:
Good in Good jacket. Size: 6x0x9; Beige cloth with brown spine titling, very good with no visible wear. Spine square. Binding sound. Dust jacket very good with light edgewear, heavy foxing to verso (no aesthetic effect from exterior). Textblock edges foxed. Interior clean, text unmarked.
Add this copy of The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Pre-Industrial Japan to cart. $74.03, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 1989 by University of California Press.
Add this copy of The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Pre-Industrial Japan to cart. $118.83, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1989 by University of California Press.
