Things of the anthropocene: the unruly heritage of coastal reclamations in JAPAN

It has been estimated that by 1955 humans came to exceed the combined agency of the world’s rivers as the greatest force in the movement of earth material across the planet’s surface. A significant fraction of anthropogenic earth movement is represented by the dredged sediments and excavated soil and rock that has been used to infill coastal waters to create new land that has been used for port infrastructure, industrial facilities, and urban expansion. This chapter examines these coastal ‘reclamations’ from an archaeological perspective as technofossils of the Anthropocene, arguing for the development of a 21st century strand of archaeology and heritage studies able to deal with objects such as these which, though massive in scale and environmental impact, nevertheless have been integrated and often seamlessly absorbed into our economic and social lives. Taking as its case study the reclamations concentrated along the industrial belt of the Pacific coastline of Japan’s main island, Honshu, the chapter examines two aspects of their existence as objects of unruly heritage. Firstly, the impossibility of dismantling them means they impose their presence on efforts to rehabilitate coastal ecologies; secondly, those that serve as platforms for landing imported coal and oil and for the steel mills and thermal power stations that burn them, are thus actants involved in the production of emissions that are warming the atmosphere and causing the sea to expand and rise, thus potentially thus potentially inundating them.