On more-than-human labor: revisiting Japan’s ecological modernity and the politics and ethics of interspecies entanglements

Abstract This article contributes to the discussion of the concept of ecological modernity in the context of Japanese studies. This concept generally describes modern political tactics to draw a distinction between the human and the nonhuman, reconfiguring the former’s place in and relationship with the natural world. My study focuses on the human-silkworm relation and different forms of labor in the Japanese sericulture industry from the late nineteenth century to the present. Looking closely at this specific form of interspecies relationality, I explore the extent to which the physical labor of jokō (female workers) and the metabolic labor of silkworms are together controlled and maintained by political means at a national level. Revisiting Japan’s ecological modernity from this perspective, I argue, helps reveal the state’s exploitative attitude toward both human and natural resources in more nuanced ways. The ethical and political dimension of my genealogical work also includes an attempt to raise ecological awareness about our symbiotic coexistence, as we are ineluctably bound up or entangled with others, human and nonhuman alike.