2025年度系列演講：東亞「領土」的多面測繪II

2025 Academic Lecture Series: Mapping the Multi-faceted "Territories" of East Asia II

2. Mapping Toxicities: Sedimentation and the Aftermath of Ashio Copper Mine Pollution

測繪毒性：沉積與足尾銅山礦毒及其後

Speaker: Fung Wan Yin Kimberly馮蘊妍 (Postdoctoral Fellow, Hitotsubashi University)

Moderator: Ya Hsun Chan 詹亞訓 (Assistant Professor, Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, NYCU)

Date: 14: 00-16: 00. Oct 15, 2025

Venue: Room 106A, HA Building 2, NYCU (Kuang-fu Campus).

Q&A Session: Questions in both English and Chinese are welcomed接受中英文雙語提問及討論 

摘要：

A lesser-known consequence of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake was the collapse of a tailings dam in Ashio, which released mining waste into the Watarase River that spans across Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama, and Ibaraki prefectures. The Ashio Copper Mine Pollution Incident remains unresolved more than a century after its onset during the Meiji period. Meanwhile, the Watarase Retarding Basin, constructed downstream to contain toxic runoff, was designated a Ramsar wetland in 2012, marking a shift in pollution and restoration dynamics.

Drawing upon a 29-month patchwork of multi-sited fieldwork, this talk discusses the spatial dynamics of ruination and recovery in the Ashio-Watarase River basin. It investigates how lived engagements with toxicity shape and are shaped by the mitigation and regeneration efforts tending to the land. Using sedimentation as a conceptual figure, the talk traces the geological, chemical, ecological, and infrastructural routes of kodoku (mine poison, toxicities originated from mining) and reflects on the possibilities for life that unfold in the sedimented aftermath.

講者簡介：

Fung Wan Yin Kimberly is an anthropologist whose research explores the afterlives of extraction in Japan and beyond. She investigates socio-ecological change in post-mining transitions, with broader interests in how communities navigate toxic fallout, inhabit damaged landscapes, and pursue alternative environmental futures. Her dissertation is a multi-sited ethnography of the aftermath of the Ashio Copper Mine Pollution Incident, Japan’s first major industrial pollution disaster. Drawing on her doctoral research, her nonfiction piece “What Cannot Be Unearthed” received an honorable mention in the 2025 Tell the Untold! Environmental Writing Competition hosted by the Rachel Carson Center.