The Mejiro Bird: Between Commodity, Conservation, and Companion

Charlotte Linton

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Chapter 3 The Mejiro Bird

Between Commodity, Conservation, and Companion

In: Animals Matter: Resistance and Transformation in Animal Commodification

Author:

Charlotte Linton

Charlotte Linton
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 56–84

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004528444_005

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Abstract

Guided by the presence of a mejiro (Japanese white-eye) bird, kept in a cage at a traditional textile dyeing workshop, this chapter discusses how songbirds on the biodiverse island of Amami Ōshima, southern Japan, have moved between commodity, conservation and companion. Using data garnered via participant observation and archival research, it examines the generationally changing attitudes towards the commodification of animals in Japan, that between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries have been impacted by geopolitics, national identity, histories of conservation and changing economic fortunes. It argues that in the confines of the textile dyeing workshop the mejiro bird becomes a totem to assist commerce, that draws on essentialist ideology that the Japanese people are innately “close to nature”. Yet the chapter shows that totemism, which also posits the mejiro as a companion and spiritual aid to work, led the bird to resist their own commodification, even propelling humans to resist on their behalf.

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Animals Matter: Resistance and Transformation in Animal Commodification

Series: Human-Animal Studies, Volume: 26

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004528444

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 25 Nov 2022

Subjects
- Biology
  - Ecology
  - Zoology
- Philosophy
  - Ethics & Moral Philosophy
  - Social & Political Philosophy

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Chapter 3 The Mejiro Bird

Between Commodity, Conservation, and Companion

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Animals Matter: Resistance and Transformation in Animal Commodification

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