Environment, Atmosphere, Feeling: Michael Thornton

Tokyo, and Edo before it, has long been ravaged by floods along its low-lying eastern flank. The city's rapid industrialization in the late nineteenth century took place largely in this sprawling river delta, which—despite, or perhaps because of, its environmental vulnerabilities—became home to Tokyo's modern working class. To this day Tokyo's east remains its poorest and most environmentally fragile region. The story of eastern Tokyo is not just one of risk and vulnerability, however; it is also the story of human interventions into the landscape, sometimes at mind-boggling scales. The waterways that crisscross the region and the landfills that have extended the shoreline speak to the total remaking of this region, at times at the expense of the very communities these projects were ostensibly meant to protect. This talk will travel downstream along these waterways, from the northern reaches of the city to Tokyo Disneyland and "Dream Island" on Tokyo Bay, to illustrate the contested nature of environmental justice in Japan's capital.

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