Land of Plants in Motion is the first in any language to examine two
companion stories: (1) the rise of an East Asian floristic zone and how
the Japanese islands evolved an astonishing wealth of plant species, and
(2) the growth of Japanese botanical sciences.
The majority of plant species regarded as "Japanese" trace their origins
to western China and the eastern Himalaya but are so indigenized that
they often seem native today. Early modern scientists in Japan drew on
knowledge of Chinese herbal medicine but achieved distinctive insights
into plant life commensurate with but separate from their European
counterparts. Scholars at the University of Tokyo pioneered Japanese
plant biology in the late nineteenth century. They incorporated Western
botanical methods but sought a degree of difference in taxonomy while
also gaining international legitimacy through publications in English.
Japan's age of empire (1895-1945) was less about plant exploration and
more about plant collection, for both scientific and economic benefits.
Displays of species from throughout the empire made Japan's sphere of
colonization and conquest visible at home. The infrastructure for
research and instruction expanded slowly after World War Two: new
laboratories, botanical gardens, scholarly societies, and publications
eventually allowed for great diversity of specialized study, especially
with the growth of molecular biology in the 1970s and DNA research in
the 1980s. Basic research was harmed by cuts in government funding
during 2012-2017, but Japanese plant biologists continue to enjoy
international esteem in many fields of scholarship.
