David L. Howell
Huntington Library
Thursday, April 18, 2024, 8:00 pm EDT
Education and Visitor Center, Rothenberg Hall & Livestreamed 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108
David L. Howell, professor of Japanese history at Harvard University, introduces the excremental economy of Edo and discusses Japanese society's relationships with waste.
Poop is yucky. Poop is useful. Poop is a yucky thing of utility. Thanks to a perfect resource cycle, in which urban excrement fertilized the fields that supplied vegetables to feed the city, Edo—modern-day Tokyo—was arguably the healthiest major city in the world in the 18th and 19th centuries. David L. Howell, professor of Japanese history at Harvard University, will introduce the excremental economy of Edo and think about Japanese relationships with waste.