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Traveling widely via artwork, photography, advertising, and film, Fuji's iconic silhouette is instantly recognizable to people around the globe. At the same time, industries and military bases located on and around Fuji make it a global mountain not just aesthetically, but economically, politically, and ecologically as well. By examining both the representation and material exploitation of Fuji over the past several hundred years, this talk will show how Japan's premier mountain became an especially potent, multi-faceted, and far-reaching contributor to the physical and imagined worlds in which we live.
Andrew Bernstein is an Associate Professor of History at Lewis and Clark College, where he teaches courses in Japanese and environmental history. He is the author of Modern Passings: Death Rites, Politics, and Social Change in Imperial Japan (2006), and is currently writing Fuji: A Mountain in the Making, a comprehensive "biography" of Japan's premier mountain. He also worked with a Lewis and Clark geologist to design and lead the college's multidisciplinary Mt. Fuji study abroad program in the summers of 2014 and 2017.