History Colloquium: “Illumination and its Discontents: Electricity Theft and the Political Economy of Japanese Energy”

“Illumination and its Discontents: Electricity Theft and the Political Economy of Japanese Energy”

Ian J. Miller

Professor

Department of History

Harvard University

How did the world’s third-largest economy, Japan, become addicted to fossil fuels? The first non-Western nation to industrialize—a process driven by calories from coal and calories from bodies—the country now imports 97% of its primary energy and is home to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, site of three partial core meltdowns. This talk takes us back to the dawn of the energy-intensive culture that we now call “modernity,” tracing the emergence of new attitudes towards electrical power and tracking the development of a political economy that has colonized the climate. Our focus will be tight: the streets of Yokohama and Tokyo at the beginning of the twentieth century. This presentation builds on Miller’s work as a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellow.

Ian Jared Miller is a historian of Japan and East Asia. His research is primarily concerned with the cultural dimensions of scientific, technological, and environmental change. He is the author of The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo (University of California Press, 2013) and co-editor with Brett L. Walker and Julia Adeney Thomas of Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power (University of Hawaii Press, 2013).

This event is part of the UBC Department of History Colloquium Series and is hosted by the Department of History in cooperation with the Meiji at 150 Committee.