Weather Signs: Traditional Meteorological Knowledge in Japanese Small-Scale Fisheries by Giovanni Bulian

Drawing on ethnography, historical sources, and vernacular environmental knowledge, Weather Signs (Berghahn Books, 2026) examines how fishermen and coastal communities in Japan read winds, clouds, seas, animals, and celestial signs to anticipate change and manage risk. Centred on the vernacular forecasting framework known as kantenbōki, the study traces the entanglement of sensory perception, language, ritual, and labor in everyday engagements with atmosphere. Moving between micro-scale practices and broader climatic regimes, this book shows how local weather knowledge persists, adapts, and intertwines with modern meteorology, revealing weather as a relational, cultural, and ecological field rather than a mere physical backdrop.

Giovanni Bulian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His publications include Indigenous Weather Understanding in Japanese Fishing Communities (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science, Oxford University Press, 2020) and, with Yasushi Nakano (eds.), Small-scale Fisheries in Japan: Environmental and Socio-cultural Perspectives (Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2018).

Weather Signs is part of the Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology series published by Berghahn Books.