Island of Dreams chronicles Japan’s devastating environmental crises and the social movements that rose to confront them.

What Japan’s past reveals about our shared future

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About the Book

A compelling read

The Fiftieth Anniversary Edition brings this classic book back into print (and as an ebook!) in 2025. Island of Dreams reminds the world about Japan's historic struggle for environmental justice and its relevance for today's efforts to preserve and save our planet.

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About the Book

Authors Norie Huddle and Michael Reich write in their new preface in 2025: "As we republish Island of Dreams in this Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, we invite readers to remember Japan's environmental crises of the past and reflect on the global implications of these stories. We hope that making Island of Dreams available again will offer readers valuable insights to help us come together and protect our global environment into the future."

See Selected Contents from ISLAND OF DREAMS

Preface to the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition 2025 by Norie Huddle and Michael Reich (pdf)

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IOD Table of Contents (pdf)

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About the Authors

NORIE HUDDLE

Born in Virginia in 1944, graduated from Brown University in Russian language (1966) and spent two years in Colombia, S.A. with the Peace Corps. Back in America, she studied Chinese and environmental sciences and, in 1971, was given a scholarship to attend a conference in Japan after which she hoped to visit China. But shocked by Japan’s deteriorated environment, she stayed to study the problem and write Island of Dreams with Michael Reich. A Visiting Scholar with Hitotsubashi University’s President Shigeto Tsuru’s research center (1973-5), Norie returned to America (1975) to organize “Project America 1976,” celebrating America’s Bicentennial by bicycling 9 months across America. Her book about this became a bestseller in Japan.

In 1979, Norie founded the Center for New National Security to study national and global security issues, broadly defined. During the 1980s, while participating in numerous US-USSR citizen diplomacy initiatives, she wrote Surviving: The Best Game on Earth , a NYTimes bestseller redefining national security. In the 1990s, Norie wrote three more bestsellers and built her house (hands-on) in West Virginia. In 2007, she and her husband, Richard Wheeler, began transforming a semi-abandoned 350-acre farm in Ecuador into the Garden of Paradise. In 2011, they won the first successful Rights of Nature lawsuit in Ecuador and in the world. Today the Garden of Paradise has visitors from all over the world. Norie continues to write, consult, coach and do public speaking. (For more information, see gardenofparadise.net.)

MICHAEL REICH

born in Ohio in 1950, entered Yale University in September 1968 and, after three years of courses, travelled to Japan in 1971 under the Yale Five-Year B.A. Program. In Japan, Michael first worked as a medical technician at the Heart Institute of Japan (Tokyo Women’s Medical University) and then moved to Keio University’s International Medical Information Center as visiting researcher. In October 1973, he was appointed as research assistant at the Princeton University Center for Environmental Studies. While in Japan for three years, he wrote Island of Dreams with Norie Huddle. He then returned to the U.S.A. in the summer of 1974. Michael graduated with a B.A. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry in 1974, then received his M.A. in East Asian Studies in 1975 and PhD. in political science in 1981, all from Yale.

Michael joined the faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1983 and helped establish the Takemi Program in International Health, serving as director from 1988 to 2023. Among his many publications, he is coauthor of Six Lives/Six Deaths: Portraits from Modern Japan (Yale, 1979), author of Toxic Politics: Responding to Chemical Disasters (Cornell, 1991), and coauthor of Getting Health Reform Right: A Guide to Improving Performance and Equity (Oxford, 2004). He is founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Health Systems & Reform since 2015, and is currently the Taro Takemi Professor of International Health Policy, Emeritus at Harvard. (For more information, see https://michaelrreich.com)

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Testimonials About Island of Dreams

Island of Dreams sparked an awakening, among English-language readers the world over, about the human and environmental costs of Japan’s race to industrialization.

This book stands among the most influential works on Japan of the 1970s.

Prof. Robert B Leflar

Visiting Research Scholar,
Univ of Tokyo Faculty of Law

Island of Dreams was the best book for understanding Japan’s environmental history in my research on eco-disasters. It is remarkable that foreign authors, during their time in Japan, were able to produce a work of such depth and insight.

Prof. Seok Soon Park

Professor Emeritus, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea; author of Eco-Disasters: What Happened and How to Prevent Them

In re-reading Island of Dreams recently, after 50 years, I was impressed with the depth of the reporting and how well the book illustrates what environmental struggles look like for the players involved. Island of Dreams is the most thorough book I know in capturing the give-and-take that happens when citizens and victims seek to correct environmental insults.

Editor Richard Bell

Editor of the Eastern Shore Cooperator, Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada, and coauthor of Nukespeak: Nuclear Language, Myths, and MIndset, 1982.