Give Us Our Blue Skies Back: ordinary housewives, citizen science, and mutual aid in Kitakyūshū’s ‘hidden’ anti-pollution movement of the 1950s and 1960s

Thesis

The Give Us Our Blue Skies Back movement (1950-1969) by Tobata’s Collaborative Women’s Association was one of the earliest, longest-lived and most comprehensive environmental movements of the 1950s and 1960s, starting at a time when pollution was glorified as a corollary of growth and progress, years before environmental protection and civil rights were discussed in Japanese society.

Due to the economic dependence of many families on income from the city’s heavy industries such as the national iron and steel giant, Yahata Steelworks, but also in order not to jeopardise the prosperity of the ‘industry castle town’ (kikgyō jōkamachi), which received major tax revenues from the polluting companies, Tobata’s women found themselves in a position where confrontational activism could severely impact the livelihood of the community. Basing their movement on independent scientific investigation, the women were able to reveal a detrimental impact of Tobata’s pollution on physical and mental health, as well as on the environment and the whole ecosystem. Despite being ordinary, largely uneducated housewives, Tobata’s women contributed to a better scientific understanding of pollution, especially by revealing a significant correlation between Tobata’s pollution levels and local death rates from lung and heart diseases already in 1965. Their impressive scientific studies and ‘environmental PR’ sensitised the local community, industry and government regarding the dangers of pollution by the mid-1960s, and managed to trigger a paradigm change regarding the desirability of soot and smoke.

Despite having remained largely unnoticed by historians and political scientists due to the absence of open conflict, violence and demands for financial compensation amongst the Give Us Our Blues Skies Back activists, it is one of the most innovative anti-pollution movements in Japan’s high-growth years. Whilst the large majority of contemporary anti-pollution movements were aimed at protecting their members’ economic wellbeing, the activism by Tobata’s women’s associations poses an outstanding example of civil society fighting for social justice, equality, environmental protection, and a just society based on mutual aid.

This thesis investigates concepts of gender, the environment, and progress in the 1950s and 1960s, and highlights the dichotomy of benefitting from Japan’s rapid growth in the 1960s whilst suffering from pollution from the very companies on which the activists’ household income depended. Combining in-depth archival research with an oral history approach, it examines the ‘everydayness’ of pollution in Tobata’s 1950s and 1960s. It investigates the psychological, physical and social responses to pollution amongst the local population, drawing on a plethora of anecdotes from personal interviews as well as from a vast array of primary sources disclosed in 2014 and 2015.

Authors: Schrade, A

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-9gmbeonjv
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: movement; social movement; women's association; women's history; pollution; housewives; environmental movement; oral history; Kitakyushu; pollution control; 1960s; environment; citizen science; 1950s
• Subjects: political science; sociology; modern history; women's studies; Japanese history; gender studies; history