ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the environmental history of Japan. The reconstruction of past climates is an important and growing field of study in Japan as elsewhere. In the historical period, perhaps the most striking correlation is that between rapid climatic oscillations and political unrest in the medieval centuries. Recently, paleoclimatologist Nakatsuka Takeshi has contributed to this debate by comparing climatic fluctuations with the archaeological and the historical records. Both the archaeological and the historical records contain many examples of how human activities altered Japan's natural environment. For purposes of classification, historians often divide their source material into "primary" and "secondary" categories. Primary sources are written materials roughly contemporaneous with the events being studied; secondary sources are subsequent analyses or descriptions by historians. True, traditional primary sources are of immense value to the environmental historian. The mention of archaeology brings US to another type of "primary source": physical evidence.
