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Kirill Kartashov

Thesis

Thesis

Pyrethrum in Japan: A History of Rise and Fall, 1880s-1940s

Supervisors: Dr Sabine Clarke, Dr Oleg Benesch

Research

Research

My research explores the social and cultural history of pyrethrum, an insecticide made of the dried flowers of pyrethrum daisy, in the 1880s-1940s Japan. Considering that by the 1930s Japan became the world’s leading pyrethrum producer and that pyrethrum was positioned as one of the ‘special’ products of Japan, the scarcity of Anglophone scholarship on the subject is surprising. Using primary sources in Japanese and English, I am focussing on such questions as: What were the reasons behind the rapid growth of pyrethrum’s popularity in Japan? How did the attitudes of scientists, farmers, entrepreneurs, and legislators towards pyrethrum vary? Did pyrethrum have any competitors among other natural insecticides, or was its popularity unmatched? Why did pyrethrum production in Japan plummet after 1945 and to what extent does the history of pyrethrum in Japan prove the popular view that the introduction of synthetic insecticides (particularly DDT) after World War II rendered all the previous insecticides obsolete? My work is part of a larger York-based project, ‘The Chemical Empire: A New History of Synthetic Insecticides in Britain and its Colonies, c 1920-1970’, funded by Wellcome Trust. My research interests also include early-modern and modern Japanese intellectual history and the history of Japan–Russia relations in the late 18th-early 19th centuries.

Papers and publications

Papers:

  • 'Pyrethrum in Japan: A History of Rise and Fall, 1880s-1940s', BAJS/Japan Foundation Postgraduate Workshop, online, February 2021.
  • ‘Daikokuya Kōdayū's (1751-1828) Life after His Return to Japan', The 21st Conference ‘History and Culture of Japan’, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, February 2019.
  • 'The Journal of I. F. Trapeznikov (?): an Unpublished Primary Source on Adam Laxman’s Expedition (1792-1793)’, The 2nd International Student Conference in Asian and African Studies 'Ex Oriente Lux', Saint Petersburg State University, October 2017.
  • ‘The Place of Adam Laxman’s Expedition in the History of Early Russia-Japan Relations’, The 8th Conference of Young Japanologists ‘New Look’, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, November 2016.
  • ‘Martin Spangberg’s Expeditions: Goals and Results’, The 7th Conference of Young Japanologists ‘New Look’, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, October 2015.

Publications:

  • 'Daikokuya Kōdayū’s Life after His Return to Japan,' in History and Culture of Japan, issue 12, scientific ed. N. Trubnikova and I. Okazov, executive ed. A. Meshcheryakov (Moscow: HSE Publishing House, 2020): 385-398. (in Russian)
  • 'Ritual and Law: Reception of Adam Laxman’s Expedition in Japan,' in Russian Japanology Review, vol. 1, ed. D. Streltsov and S. Grishachev (Moscow: AIRO-XXI, 2018): 149-158. Co-authored with Vasilii Shchepkin.
  • ‘The Journal of the Russian Expedition to Japan with the Attachment of the Correspondence between the Head of the Expedition and the Coastal Authorities concerning the Permission to Enter Japanese Ports and Disembark the Crew’ as a Primary Source on Adam Laxman’s Expedition (1792–1793),' Japanese Studies in Russia 4 (2017): 50-61. (in Russian)
  • 'Martin Spangberg’s Expeditions: Goals and Results,' in Proceedings of the 7th Conference of Young Japanologists 'New Look', Moscow, October 22-23, 2015, ed. A. Novikova (Moscow: Spektr, 2016): 47-54. (in Russian)

Contact details

Kirill Kartashov
PhD student
Department of History
University of York
Heslington
York
YO10 5DD