Page 222 - Changing Living Spaces

Satoshi Murayama, Hiroko Nakamura, Noboru Higashi and Toru Terao

Figure 2 Amakusa in Japan and Takahama

and this fundamental change in the environmental history of Britain oc-
curred much earlier than the Industrial Revolution. E. A. Wrigley argued
that this change enabled sustainable economic growth in Britain. In oth-
er words, the liberation from natural constraints meant the end of the era
of the organic economy, which was to be affected by hydro-climatic condi-
tions and climate change.
Takahama, a village in the Amakusa Islands, Kyushu, Japan (figure 2),
is located in a relatively warm region of Japan. Therefore, even in the di-
ary of Ueda Yoshiuzu, one of the most important historical sources we
used for our research (as explained later in the text), there is no mention
of the use of firewood for heating, although fuel resources were needed
for daily life.
The environmental history presented in this chapter focuses on the
village of Takahama and covers the period from the late eighteenth to the
early nineteenth century. When comparing to the local or regional history

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