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2 results

  • 9 - The Pacific Context of Japan’s Environmental History

  • from PART II - Economy, Environment, and Technology
  • Edited by David L. Howell, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge History of Japan
    Published online:
    15 January 2024
    Print publication:
    23 November 2023, pp 296-341

  • Summary

    This chapter explores Japan’s environmental history within the context of the Pacific world and its natural and human-fashioned features. Japan’s history is intertwined with the rhythms of its Pacific environment in physical and cultural ways. In this manner, the Pacific Ocean serves as a “connective force,” as one historian has described it, with far more tensile strength than the brittle cultural coherency of East Asian or Western civilization. The Pacific world provides coherency to Japanese history in ways that are often neglected but that relate to Japan’s modern industrial successes and its likely Anthropocene tragedies. By analyzing Pacific tectonics, Pacific highlands and lowlands, Pacific hydrography, Pacific climates, and Pacific politics and culture, this chapter demonstrates that the Pacific Ocean is not only a “connective force” of Japan’s history but also the energy source that powers much of it as well.

  • Ship Routing Utilizing Strong Ocean Currents

  • Yu-Chia Chang, Ruo-Shan Tseng, Guan-Yu Chen, Peter C Chu, Yung-Ting Shen
  • Journal:
    The Journal of Navigation / Volume 66 / Issue 6 / November 2013
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    17 July 2013, pp. 825-835
    Print publication:
    November 2013

  • From the Surface Velocity Program (SVP) drifter current data, a detailed and complete track of strong ocean currents in the north-western Pacific is provided using the bin average method. The focus of this study is on the Kuroshio, the strong western boundary current of the North Pacific flowing northward along the east coast of Taiwan and then turning eastward off southern Japan. With its average flow speed of about 2 knots, the Kuroshio can significantly increase the ship's speed for a “super-slow-steaming” container ship travelling at speeds of 12 knots between the ports of Southeast Asia and Japan. By properly utilizing knowledge of strong ocean currents to follow the Kuroshio on the northbound runs and avoid it on the return trip, considerable fuel can be saved and the transit time can be reduced. In the future, the detailed Kuroshio saving-energy route could be built into electronic chart systems for all navigators and shipping routers.