Insect Histories of East Asia

Spotlights insects in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean history from the exalted to the despised

Interactions between people and animals are attracting overdue attention in diverse fields of scholarship, yet insects still creep within the shadows of more charismatic birds, fish, and mammals. Insect Histories of East Asia centers on bugs and creepy crawlies and the taxonomies in which they were embedded in China, Japan, and Korea to present a history of human and animal cocreation of habitats in ways that were both deliberate and unwitting. Using sources spanning from the earliest written records into the twentieth century, the contributors draw on a wide range of disciplines to explore the dynamic interaction between the notional insects that infested authors' imaginations and the six-legged creatures buzzing, hopping, and crawling around them.

David A. Bello is E. L. Otey Professor of East Asian Studies and director of East Asian studies at Washington and Lee University. His most recent book is Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain: Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China’s Borderlands. Daniel Burton-Rose is visiting assistant professor of history of science, technology, and the environment at Wake Forest University. He is East Asia editor of the journal Asian Medicine. Contributors: Lijing Jiang, Olivia Milburn, Sang-ho Ro, Mårten Söderblom Saarela, Kerry Smith, and Federico Valenti