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Article ID: CBB063827653

Attacked by Excrement: The Political Ecology of Shit in Wartime and Postwar Tokyo (April 2018)

Kreitman, Paul (Author)

Environmental History
Volume: 23
Issue: 2
Pages: 342-366
Publication date: April 2018
Language: English

URI: https://academic.oup.com/envhis/article/23/2/342/4858535

DOI: 10.1093/envhis/emx136

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Political ecology Human ecology Waste disposal Fertilizers Infrastructure World War II Excrement; feces 20th century, late Japan Tokyo (Japan)

The Pacific War permanently transformed the political ecology of excrement in the Greater Tokyo area. Since the Edo period (1603–1868), a network of commercial night soil collectors had operated in the city, emptying its latrines for use as fertilizer. Although increasingly subject to strain in the interwar period, the system adapted enough to obviate significant municipal investment in sewer construction. Wartime mobilization and fuel shortages, however, pushed these night soil distribution networks to the breaking point, leading to an “attack by excrement.” The municipal government responded to the crisis by mobilizing residents’ associations and suburban commuter trains, sidelining commercial collectors in the process. The immediate postwar period further destabilized the old political ecology: a black market in excrement briefly flourished, only to subside with the rapid proliferation of commercial fertilizer. Finally, Occupation government personnel, upon encountering the chaotic postwar night soil trade, expressed contempt for what they viewed as a backward, inherently unhygienic custom. The Tokyo metropolitan government internalized this “colonizing nostril” during the run-up to the 1964 Olympics, when it finally decided to invest in a comprehensive wastewater sewer system for the city. Attention to the wartime political ecology of excrement illuminates how home front societies have responded to the unforeseen pressures of total war, and reveals the fundamentally contingent nature of embedded enviro-technical networks such as night soil distribution and sewer infrastructure.

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