Since forty years ago, staff at the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) have conducted research in various areas of what can be broadly described as 'environmental anthropology. In 2016, Minpaku launched a program for 'Special Research Projects' that will promote international collaboration and research dissemination. In the first year of this program, a project with the theme of environmental anthropology was started under the title of 'Relationships Between Environment, Culture and Civilization'. Here I summarise how studies related to this theme evolved at Minpaku, and their apparent impact. The research trends are reviewed with reference to papers, single-author volumes, and edited volumes published by Minpaku, from 1976 to 2016. In particular, I consider work published in three in-house publications serials: Senri Ethnological Studies (SES, 95 volumes), Senri Ethnological Reports (SER, 141 volumes) and the Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology (Bulletin, 168 volumes). These serials mainly use English and Japanese, but other languages are also often used. The work reviewed represents three distinct though overlapping areas of environmental anthropology: cultural ecology, political ecology and historical ecology. Our staff have also published a large body of work through other publishers, but this is beyond the scope of the present review.