Becoming Botanical: Plant Life in Modern Japan

This month we sat down with Jon Pitt to discuss his new book "Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan." The book spans Japanese writers and filmmakers from the 1930s to today whose works all ask a similar question: What would it mean for humans to be more like plants? Looking at the ways that this question informed critiques of colonialism and even today immigration in these works, Pitt labels how these authors take up the plasticity of plants "becoming botanical."

This episode is a great companion piece to our last episode with Rachel DiNitto on Japanese Ecocinema!

For more of Jon Pitt:

Email: jpitt@uci.edu

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Episode recorded August 22nd, 2025

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0