The Japanese Alpine Empire: A Transnational Environmental History of Japan’s “Alpine” Landscapes

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Fynn Holm
• Subject Area: Asian Studies ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 539688406

This Emmy Noether project proposal is a global environmental history of the Japanese Alps and the following colonization of East Asian mountain regions (here called the “Japanese Alpine Empire”). The aim of the project is to understand the role “alpine” knowledge played in changing and transforming fragile mountain ecosystems in East Asia and what consequences these had for the mountain communities. In this way, the project takes both a comparative intellectual history approach, by highlighting the similarities and differences with (colonial) European mountain conceptions, and a longue durée environmental history approach, by following the development of East Asian mountains over the course of the second half of the Little Ice Age (1550-1850), the Age of Imperialism (1850-1950) and the Anthropocene (1950-present).

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups
• International Connection: Japan, Switzerland, USA
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Caleb Carter, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. David Fedman, Ph.D.; Shiori Hashimoto, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Claude Hauser; Professorin Dr. Mariko Iijima, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Christian Rohr