Nature, Culture, and Food in Monsoon Asia (International Perspectives in Geography)

The giant Asian monsoon has formed a diverse climate and natural environment. The Asian monsoon climate manifests itself in manifold ways depending not just on the latitude or altitude of an area but also on physical conditions such as topography and vegetation and even the size of its human population. Likewise, the livelihoods of people in the affected area are diverse. This book focuses on nature and agriculture, food, and climate and culture as an excellent framework for understanding the relationship between humans and the environment in complex Monsoon Asia. Through the discussions in this book, what the authors have sought to demonstrate is that the livelihoods in Monsoon Asia demonstrate unique forms in a limited environment, while the Asian monsoon climate has one of the largest movements of any natural phenomenon on a macroscopic scale. These manifest forms are diverse both on a time scale and on a spatial scale and are extremely diversified in limited regions. Such diversity is not only due just to the effects of the natural environment but also results from social and cultural forces. In this area of Monsoon Asia, traditional and religious social norms are becoming entangled with “new” economic and political norms brought in from the outside world by globalization.

Satoshi Yokoyama is a professor in the Department of Geography, the Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University. His research interests lie in the field of human–nature interactions, particularly in land-use change, natural resource use, and livelihood change. One of his most recent research interests is traditional fermented foods in the Himalayas and Southeast Asia region. He is an author or editor of six books and more than 90 academic book chapters and research articles. He was a visiting scholar at the East-West Center, U.S.A., from 2005 to 2006; a visiting associate professor at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Japan, in 2011; and a visiting professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan, from 2013 to 2014.

Jun Matsumoto is the director of the Research Center for Climatology and a professor in the Department of Geography, Tokyo Metropolitan University. He is also affiliated with the Ocean–Atmosphere–Land Processes Research (DCOP), the Japan Agency for Marine–Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) as a visiting principal scientist and an affiliate professor in the Department of Geology and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University, USA. His research interests are global and regional climate, in particular, Asian and global monsoon climate, and its influence on human society. He has served as the chair of the Commission on Climatology (CoC) of the International Geographical Union since 2016. He is also the chief editor for the Human–Geoscience Section, Progress in Earth and Planetary Science (PEPS), Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU).

Hitoshi Araki is a professor of geography and an associate dean of the College of Gastronomy Management, Ritsumeikan University, Japan. His research interests are economic geography, the agri-food system, and food safety. He is a founder of Japan–Korea–China Joint Conference of Geography and also a Steering Committee member of the conference (2006–Present).  He has published several books in the field of food geography and is now an editorial board member of the Japanese Journal of Human Geography.