The earth underneath Tokyo is trembling. This time, however, the activity is not seismic; it is not one of the many tremors that intermittently punctuate daily life in this city. It is, rather, a constant trembling: a condition of the global ecological crisis in which we now find ourselves.
It is not as concrete as an earthquake, but nor should it be written off as metaphor — it is a universal symptom of what French philosopher Bruno Latour refers to as the "new climatic regime." And for Latour, visiting Japan to deliver a series of lectures and workshops for the Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Global Arts, the Tokyo soil proves to be fertile ground for discussing this crisis.
"I just visited the Edo-Tokyo Museum, and I was very struck by the close description of the soil, of the geology of Tokyo, and of the layers of sediment," Latour says. "It's a very visual and traumatic vision of what happens to the earth in Tokyo, so I'm a bit obsessed with that right now."
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