The Age of Nitrogen: Japan, Empires, and Postcolonial Asia

FAIN: FO-273935-21

Hiromi Mizuno
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN 55455-2009)

Research and writing leading to a book on how chemical nitrogen fertilizer affected the economic, political, and agricultural history of Japan and Asia from the 1900s to the 1970s.

My book examines how chemical nitrogen, the most important fertilizer for crop yield, changed the economic, political, and ecological landscapes of Japan and Asia. An intellectual, environment, and political history that re-examines the twentieth century, it critically analyzes the modern concept of the soil, the relationship between industrialization and agriculture, and various frontiers exploited under the banner of development and food security. It employs an innovative format that centers on the massive and dynamic flow of nitrogenous fertilizer in the Japanese empire, Cold-War Asia, and the world, while bringing in scientists, business leaders, farmers, and policy makers—ignored in the existing scholarship--playing important roles in the expansive fertilizer networks. NEH funding will enable me to complete the manuscript for submission. The book connects Japan to global development and environmental studies and will be accessible to both academic and non-academic readers.

Associated Products

Soil Goes Modern: Japanese Agriculture Meets Western Chemistry (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Soil Goes Modern: Japanese Agriculture Meets Western Chemistry
Author: Hiromi Mizuno
Abstract: This chapter (Chapter 1) discusses dynamic changes that took place in Japanese agriculture in the late-19th and early-20 century. When Gustaf van Liebig, German chemist and "the father" of modern agricultural science, started to voice concerns about the degradation of soil in Europe, he turned to the Tokugawa-era Japanese use of night soil as the ideal way to circulate nitrogen between agricultural production and urban consumption. Karl Marx used Liebig to come up with his (now famous) concept of the metabolic lift. Yet, Japan, which after the Meiji Restoration earnestly imported Liebig's agricultural chemistry, ironically came to have the most chemical dependent agriculture in the world by the 1930s.
Date: 09/17/2022
Conference Name: Midwest Japan Seminar at Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs

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