On the threshold of the twenty-first century, the ordinary Japanese citizen has become acutely aware that various environmental hazards pose a serious threat to daily life; such hazards include the problems of waste disposal, dioxin and other substances that disturb humans' endocrine balance. Who, a mere decade ago when these problems were first brought to our attention, would have anticipated that these environmental problems would so quickly become so common and so serious? At the same time, environmental problems on a global scale, such as ozone depreciation by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), global warming and climate change, have become topics of everyday conversation. The main objective of this book is to take in these environmental problems, focus ing on the two locally important and interrelated issues of waste and pollution. This will enable us to investigate the whole range of problems, from regionally based pol lution caused by waste disposal and dioxin to the transboundary warming brought about by CO and CFCs. We shall thus be able to analyze comprehensively the whole 2 extent of "waste and pollution" problems, ranging from those caused by real garbage and domestic waste to the many kinds of technologically generated waste that result from the production, circulation, and consumption of industrial goods and services.

What does "environment" really mean in the complex, non-Western milieu of present-day Tokyo? How can anthropology contribute to the technical discussions and quantitative measures typically found in environmental studies? Author Peter Wynn Kirby explores these questions through a deep cultural analysis of waste in contemporary Japan. His parameters are intentionally broad—encompassing ideas of "nature," attitudes toward hygiene, notions of health and illness, problems with vermin and toxic waste, processes of social exclusion, and reproductive threats. Troubled Natures concludes that how surroundings are conceived, invoked, and enacted is subjective, highly contextual, and under continual negotiation—with suggestive implications for anthropology, social science, and environmental studies generally. Kirby casts his anthropological lens over two Tokyo neighborhoods, comparing environmental consciousness and conduct in communities facing specific toxic threats (real or perceived). In each fieldsite, the tension between lofty rhetoric and daily practices helps highlight the practical ambivalence of Japanese environmental consciousness. Waste practices and ideas of pollution in Tokyo tie clearly into broader social issues such as exclusionary practices, emergent lifestyle changes, recycling efforts, and novel forms of energy production. Throughout, waste and environmental health problems in Tokyo collide against diverse cultural elements linked to nature(s)—uneasy relations between animals and humans; "native" conceptions of the "foreign" and the "polluted"; reproductive challenges in the face of a plunging fertility rate; and changing attitudes toward illness and health. The book’s thoughtful inquiry into the ways in which environmental questions circulate throughout Japanese society furnishes insight into central elements of contemporary Japanese life. As for the pivotal question of how to shape environmental policy internationally, Troubled Natures reminds us that efforts to influence a society’s waste shadow must unfold over a distinctive sociocultural topography where attitudes to garbage, health, purity, pollution, and excess can impact environmental priorities in profound ways.

"This book contains the contributions presented in the special session 'Advanced Waste Treatment and Management in Japan' at the 2nd International Conference on Waste Management and the Environment, held in Rhodes, Greece, from 29 September-1 October 2004"--Pref.

The Japanese, through a combination of public policy, private market conditions, a geographic necessity, practice integrated municipal solid waste (MSW) management. The approach of MSW management in Japan is as follows: The basic concept of refuse treatment consists of recycling discharged refuse into usable resources, reusing such resources as much as possible, and then treating or disposing of the usable portion into a sanitary condition. Considering the difficulty of procuring land or seaside areas for such purpose as a refuse disposal site, it will be necessary to minimize the volume of refuse collected for treatment or disposal.

In Waste, Eiko Maruko Siniawer innovatively explores the many ways in which the Japanese have thought about waste—in terms of time, stuff, money, possessions, and resources—from the immediate aftermath of World War II to the present. She shows how questions about waste were deeply embedded in the decisions of everyday life, reflecting the priorities and aspirations of the historical moment, and revealing people’s ever-changing concerns and hopes. Over the course of the long postwar, Japanese society understood waste variously as backward and retrogressive, an impediment to progress, a pervasive outgrowth of mass consumption, incontrovertible proof of societal excess, the embodiment of resources squandered, and a hazard to the environment. Siniawer also shows how an encouragement of waste consciousness served as a civilizing and modernizing imperative, a moral good, an instrument for advancement, a path to self-satisfaction, an environmental commitment, an expression of identity, and more. From the late 1950s onward, a defining element of Japan’s postwar experience emerged: the tension between the desire for the privileges of middle-class lifestyles made possible by affluence and dissatisfaction with the logics, costs, and consequences of that very prosperity. This tension complicated the persistent search for what might be called well-being, a good life, or a life well lived. Waste is an elegant history of how people lived—how they made sense of, gave meaning to, and found value in the acts of the everyday.

Japan was ahead of the rest of the world when it introduced intermediate processing of municipal waste by such means as incineration in the 1960s. Owing to the small land area of the country and the difficulty in securing landfill sites, the incineration ratio of municipal combustible waste had reached 100% by the 1990s. Along with the landfill of incineration residues, proprietary technologies such as high salt leachate treatment, desalination treatment, by-product recycling, a focus on the resource of incineration residues, sea surface landfill sites, and covered type landfill sites have spread and developed since then. This book describes the introduction of incineration facilities starting in the 1960s, landfill technology, and issues arising after 1990 following the introduction of the facilities. The necessity of a total system from incineration to landfill is explained as well. The volume is a valuable resource for countries that plan to introduce intermediate processing such as incineration and for countries that are developing a waste management policy.