| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.3

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion. By Brett L. Walker. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. xii + 332 pp. Illustrations, tables, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00

How many English speakers know of the Ainu, who have been living in the northern part of Japan? Even most modern Japanese know very little about them because the Ainu were "absorbed" into Japan. Brett Walker sheds light on this process by searching out extensive Japanese-language archives. First, he challenges the sakoku (isolation) thesis by showing how actively the Edo (Tokyo) shogunate promoted commerce with foreign countries through the four ports of Ryukyu, Nagasaki, Tsushima and Ezo (Hokkaido). Second, he presents Ezo not as a frontier location but as a "middle ground," employing the "New Western history's" understanding of American Indian-European interaction.

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