Academic Activities

This presentation will explore religious and ethical responses to water pollution within modern Japanese history with particular reference to mine pollution and methylmercury poisoning. It will illustrate how an ends justify the means approach to industrial development coupled with the silencing of dissenting voices during the first half of the 20th century allowed pollution incidents to go unchecked until the 1960s. The speaker argues that responses to the Ashio Copper Mine Incident during the late 19th and early 20th centuries provided a potentially useful, though at the time thwarted, model to approach water pollution in Japan. Ultimately, however, he posits the potential utility of a consequentialist approach to pollution.