TY - BOOK ID - 77865653 TI - Earthquake nation : the cultural politics of Japanese seismicity, 1868-1930 PY - 2006 SN - 1282358871 1423766644 9786612358876 0520932293 1598759450 9780520932296 9781423766643 9781598759457 9780520246072 0520246071 9781282358874 PB - Berkeley, Calif. ; London : University of California Press, DB - UniCat KW - Earthquakes KW - Quakes (Earthquakes) KW - Earth movements KW - Natural disasters KW - Seismology KW - Social aspects KW - Psychological aspects. KW - Japan KW - Civilization KW - 699.84 KW - 699.84 Protection against vibration and noise KW - Protection against vibration and noise KW - Psychological aspects KW - J7400 KW - J4219 KW - J4000.70 KW - Japan: Science and technology -- geology KW - Japan: Sociology and anthropology -- social policy and pathology -- emergency services (fire department, ambulance services, disaster relief) KW - Japan: Social history, history of civilization -- Kindai (1850s- ), bakumatsu, Meiji, TaishÅ KW - architecture. KW - building codes. KW - building materials. KW - building project. KW - earthquake safety. KW - earthquake science. KW - earthquakes. KW - ecology. KW - environment. KW - environmental history. KW - great kant earthquake. KW - great nobi earthquake. KW - infrastructure. KW - japan. KW - meiji restoration. KW - meiji. KW - modern japan. KW - modernity. KW - nation. KW - natural disasters. KW - nonfiction. KW - osaka. KW - science. KW - seismic activity. KW - seismic waves. KW - self fashioning. KW - structural integrity. KW - tokyo. KW - traditional architecture. KW - western architecture. KW - wooden building. KW - wooden structures. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:77865653 AB - Accelerating seismic activity in late Meiji Japan climaxed in the legendary Great Nobi Earthquake of 1891, which rocked the main island from Tokyo to Osaka, killing thousands. Ironically, the earthquake brought down many "modern" structures built on the advice of foreign architects and engineers, while leaving certain traditional, wooden ones standing. This book, the first English-language history of modern Japanese earthquakes and earthquake science, considers the cultural and political ramifications of this and other catastrophic events on Japan's relationship with the West, with modern science, and with itself. Gregory Clancey argues that seismicity was both the Achilles' heel of Japan's nation-building project-revealing the state's western-style infrastructure to be surprisingly fragile-and a new focus for nativizing discourses which credited traditional Japanese architecture with unique abilities to ride out seismic waves. Tracing his subject from the Meiji Restoration to the Great Kant Earthquake of 1923 (which destroyed Tokyo), Clancey shows earthquakes to have been a continual though mercurial agent in Japan's self-fashioning; a catastrophic undercurrent to Japanese modernity. This innovative and absorbing study not only moves earthquakes nearer the center of modern Japan change-both materially and symbolically-but shows how fundamentally Japan shaped the global art, science, and culture of natural disaster. ER -