The marketing of urban human waste in the Edo/Tokyo metropolitan area: 1600--1935 (Japan).

摘要

Among other waste issues, disposal and management of human excrement has historically been one of the most serious issues in major cities. Historical literature suggests that Japan's urban society took a unique approach to management of human waste. Throughout Japan's early modern period, human waste in the city was purchased by farmers living on the urban fringe and was used as an agricultural fertilizer. Using these fertilizers, these villages supplied fresh agricultural produce to the urban market. This practice hinged on transportation cost savings that resulted from the proximity of the villages to the urban markets. However, the system broke down in the early twentieth century, as inexpensive, industrially processed fertilizers became available and cities experienced a rapid expansion.; This study focuses on the transition in the use of urban human waste in the Edo/Tokyo metropolitan area, in relation to the birth and growth of urban land use. I posit that the use of human waste as agricultural fertilizer depended on the interdependence between the city and its surrounding urban-fringe farming villages. The urban fringe served as the source of fresh foodstuffs for the urban population, while simultaneously providing a "sink" for urban wastes. The emergence, growth, and decline of urban fringe agriculture were closely related to the rise and fall of the effective use of urban human waste in these agricultural fields. The changes that affected the transition of urban-fringe agriculture, however, have multiple, interconnected dimensions.; The first half of the dissertation describes the process of urbanization in early-modern Japan, the emergence of urban-fringe agriculture, and the geography of this agriculture during the period from the early seventeenth to the end of nineteenth century. This is the period during which urban human waste established its status as an economic "good." The latter half presents the key changes that occurred in urban-fringe agriculture and their impacts on the market for urban night soil in the early twentieth century. These chapters explore the decline of the value of urban human waste as a consequence of changes in transportation costs, the availability and price of alternative fertilizers, and the demand for residential land.