Week 9: Animal History

Author: Reading: Important points:

Brett L. The Lost Wolves 1. The emergence of the Japanese wolf became possible only with the
Walker of Japan: Science emergence of many other distinctly ‘Japanese things’, such as Japan’s unique
and the creation of brand of ethnic nationalism and its imperial ideology.
the Japanese wolf 2. The application of the Linnaean system still failed to address critical
taxonomic issues regarding Japan’s wolves. This has led to many questions
raised over whether Japan’s wolves were really, according to the universally
accepted Linnaean system or otherwise wolves at all.
3. Japan’s pre-Linnaean wolf taxonomies
- One reason early modern Japanese taxonomy relating to wolves remains
so complicated is because scholars who wrote on the Japanese names for
natural things referred to two types of wild dog: ‘wolves’ and ‘mountain
dogs’
- Hitomi explained in Honcho Shokkan that wolves and mountain dogs
both belonged to the ‘same class’ of animal and so the wolf resembled a
large dog and belongs to the same ‘genus’ as the mountain dog
- Hitomi argued how wolves were more robust and dogs were thinner; how
the head of the wolf was sharper and the muzzle more tapered than that of
the mountain dog; that the wold had longer legs and their howls could be
heard from great distances  basically stating how the mountain dog was
very different from wolves
- The Wakan Sansai Zue also listed the wolf and mountain dog under
separate generic-specimen types
4. 19th century taxonomy: Japan’s Linnaean Moment
- Tanaka Yoshio, a prominent Meiji zoologist, bought the Linnaean
categorization of the mountain dog wholesale but also took seriously
Japanese stories regarding the mountain dog.
- For Tanaka and other 19th century zoologists, the mountain dog became
Japan’s wolf and coupled with the extinction of the Japanese wolf in
1905, contesting this Linnaean classification became next to impossible.
- But this created conflict between Japan’s folk-biological past and its 19th
century Linnaen moment

5. Imperial Linnaean Taxonomy

- Unlike the Japanese wolf, the Hokkaido wolf had not been given a
Linnaean classification in Siebold’s Fauna Japonica
- The skull of the Hokkaido wolf was found to be significantly larger than
that of the Japanese wolf.
- The folksy name ‘mountain dog’ also got replaced by the more nationally
centered and scientifically correct name Nihon Okami or ‘Japanese wolf’.

6. Postwar debates: Return of the mountain dog

- In the late 20th century, two competing theories emerged concerning the
evolution and extinction of Japanese’s wolves: The natural evolutionists
and the artificial evolutionists
- The natural evolutionists argue how it was migration, isolation and
environmental change on the prehistoric Japanese Archipelago that
contributed to the evolution of Japan wolves
- Artificial evolutionists argue how it was the crossbreeding with ancient
dogs that caused morphological changes in the prehistoric Siberian wolf
 and led to the emergence of a hybrid: mountain dog

7. Wolves and Japanese dogs

- 19th century Wester observers commented that Japanese dogs looked and
acted more like wolves than like the dog breeds that Westerners knew.
- So Japan’s wolves are wolves that are in the process of sustained
hybridization with dogs.
- Nakamura and Obara still prioritize the measurement of skulls to suggest
that mountain dogs and wolves can be distinguished from one another.
- Human forces sculpted the idea of what we term today as the Japanese
wolf, while non-human forces such as natural selection were also at work,
responsible for processes such as the dwarfing of wolves
- Japanese wolves are both the product of the powers of categorization
inherent in modern sceiene and also the product of syncretic powers of
Japanese cultural and religious traditions which gave the wolves certain
qualities.
- Shintoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and the animistic view of the Ainu
also created the wolves of Japan, and a different one as that created by
science.
Alexander Bay The Swift Horses 1. Kita Ōu should be seen as a frontier culture and not a line that marked the
of Nukanobu: northernmost borders of the Yamato policy
Bridging the 2. This chapter pays special attention to the role that horses played in the
Frontiers of construction of the far northeast’s frontier culture
Medieval Japan - Horses seen to be ‘bridging figures’ – creatures that galloped between the
cultural spheres of Kita Ōu and Yamato Japan.
- Hideyoshi was able to construct, through conquest and colonization, a
realm in Japan that extended to the northeastern reaches of Mutsu and
 Dewa.

3. Frontiers in Japanese history: Geography and Historiography

- Frontiers are not linear boundaries or national borders but more of ‘zones
in which the characters and influences of two or more different regions or
states come together’.
- Frontiers are zones in which there are separate social and cultural entities
which interact but no one party of the interaction fully dominates the
other. In contrast, boundaries establish the limits of well-defined political
bodies.
- Bruce Batten argues how there were no clear distinction between the inner
and outer zones of the Yamato polity and hence, instead of a single area,
there were overlapping zones of control and influence which formed the
frontier region.

- The various Emishi groups of the far northeast were frontier peoples
The Fujiwara also relied upon the economic power of trade to consolidate
their rule over the Kitakami River Basin. By controlling Kita Ōu’s
commerce with transmarine Northeast Asia, they enriched themselves and
strengthened their position through Kyoto.

- The Fujiwara had cultural and political mastery over the northeastern
frontier in Japan.

4. The Andō: A Frontier Family

- The Andō family descended from the Abe, a powerful Emishi family who
served on and off as peacekeepers in the northeast for the Yamato court.
 During the late 13th century, the Andō policed the Tsugaru region and
controlled trade between Ezo and Kita Ōu through the office of zo no sata.
- Although the Hojo authority ended with the destruction of the Kamakura
Shogunate in 1333, the Andō were able to maintain their status as
controllers of Kita Ōu, as well as of trade and relations with Ezo, using
the Hinomoto no Shogūn title throughout the medieval period.

5. The politics of warhorses and seaborne trade

- The Nukanobu area was famous for its horse farms, and during the 14th
century, the Nanbu took over the Nukanobu farms and became known for
supplying Yamato elites with chargers of the highest quality.
- The ‘swift horses of Nukanobu’ made the frontier status of Kita Ōu
famous.
- Nukanobu was part of an international horse trade that extended not only
south to Kyoto but also north to continental Northeast Asia and beyond.
- Horses played a pivotal role in the Nanbu family’s integration into the
northeastern frontier zone and acted as ‘bridging figures’.
- High quality war horses were important to medieval warrior society as
well to the economy of Kita Ōu.
- The Nanbu was able to quickly adapt to the culture and economy of Kita
Ōu due to the valued horse raising expertise.
- In order to strengthen further their position in the northeast through
Kyoto, the Nanbu and Andō competed to establish personal relations with
the Muromachi shogunate.
 In 1418, the Nanbu brought one hundred horses and one thousand
pieces of gold to the Ashikaga shogun  horses seen to be valuable
forms of tribute.
  In 1423, the Andō sent the shogun salmon, kelp, and other items
harvested from north-eastern waters
 Horses hence served as bridging figuress that enabled frontier
magnates in the far northeast to establish links with Kyoto.
 As trade items, horses were crucial to the Kita Ōu economy and as
tribute, they were valued by Yamato elites.
 Horses allowed the Nanbu to maintain ongoing ties with Kyoto
throughout the 15th century.
- A more nuanced understanding of Japan’s northeastern frontier emerges
when we recognize that both the Nanbu and the Andō were ‘lords of the
sea’ as well as ‘lords of the horse’. The Andō owned horse farms and
traded in horses while the Nanbu , putatively lords of the horse, possessed
a harbour of major importance to seaborne trade.
- Kita Ōu was hence a region characterized by separate land and sea
spheres and was overseen by two warrior families.

6. Hideyoshi’s colonization of Kita Ōu:

- In the late 16th century, Hideyoshi spread his influence throughout the
archipelago and offered a new source of political legitimacy to warrior
lords on the periphery or even outside of the Yamato polity. Hideyoshi
hence succeeded in extending his political power over all four of the large
islands and was able to displace Nanbu authority over Kita Ōu.
- Hideyoshi altered the very fabric of frontier life in Kita Ōu.

7. Challenging the Reunification Paradigm

- Hideyoshi’s coloization of the north did not necessarily have a stabilizing
effect on the region.
- Hideyoshi’s new social and political order fundamentally changed the
nature of the Nanbu family in Nukanobu. Local warrior houses resisted
and rebelled against Hideyoshi’s attempt to colonize the area which
elicited a full conquest by Japan’s new hegemon.
- In 1593, Hideyoshi awarded the Kakizaki family in Matsumae the
exclusive right to trade with the Ainu. This move cut off the region from
its culturally and economically defining connection with Northeast Asia.
Hideyoshi’s conquest and colonization also rearranged the internal
geopolitical landscape and political economy on Nanbu domain.
- The Nanbu also sifted their center of their cultural and economic activity
from the horse-farming region of Nukanobu to the rice-farming belt
running through the flood plains of the Kitakami, Nakatsu, and
Shizikuishi rivers.
- Therefore, the Nanbu region’s political, economic and cultural economy
which was centered in horses ended at the start of early modernity.
- Horses were no longer the main livelihood of the Nanbu’s traditional
branch-family territories but domains in the area monopolized the sale of
salt, fish products, rice and other grains.
- Hence Hideyoshi’s unification transformed not only political alliances but
also the culture and livelihood of the region.
- Therefore, the prosperity in Kita Ōu had depended on horse farming; the
horses were the economic and cultural pillars of the region throughout the
classical and medieval periods. As horse traders, the Nanbu presented the
Ashikaga shoguns with the finest warhorses on the archipelago  horses
acting as channels for them to acquire favour and also political power and
titles
- But it got destroyed especially by the Tokugawa shogunate who forced
the region to adapt to a political economy based on paddy agriculture for
which it was not environmentally suited  and the events of crop failures,
pestilence  all made Kita Ōu, once a region of international trade and
contact, become one of the poorest regions in Japan by the early modern
period.