Abstract
This paper is about the engai or “monkey damage” problem in Japan and the attempts made to counter it by making villages unattractive as feeding grounds to monkeys. At a practical level, this deterrence strategy consists of two strands: reducing food appeal and enhancing threat. Appeal reduction involves limiting the availability of food in the village, including both crops and non-crop forage. Threat enhancement involves making the village environment a more frightening place for monkeys by minimizing cover opportunities and by boosting the chase response to monkey sightings. At an ideological level, the deterrence strategy consists of reframing engai as a form of human “provisioning” of monkeys. This redefinition of engai as a problem of human—rather than monkey—agency is aimed at mobilizing villagers today to correct their own mistakes and become effective preventers of monkey crop damage.
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Knight, J. (2023). Undoing Monkey Attraction to the Village: A Food-and-Threat Response to Wildlife Crop-Raiding in Rural Japan. In: Ikeya, K., Balée, W. (eds) Global Ecology in Historical Perspective. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_5
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