SPECIAL SECTION: THE WORLDS OF SATOYAMA

Satoyama: The Ideal and the Real

Brian Williams



You can see them in just about any Japanese department store: mass-produced scroll paintings depicting a thatched cottage with a water wheel, set among mountains draped in mists. It is a genre-type image, but like all clichés it has an enduring appeal because behind it lies the substance of truth. Many Japanese will wax nostalgic about an idyllic rural way of life. And although the reality was often far from easy or comfortable, that way of life had a compelling beauty and also has great relevance for our own time.

In Japanese, the ideal implied in those sentimental scrolls is often summed up in one word: satoyama. Literally hamlet-mountain, satoyama has become something of a buzzword, and features extensively in Japanese government literature for the October 2010 COP10 conference on biodiversity in Nagoya. Like all buzzwords, satoyama is often used with less than complete comprehension of what the concept really entails. This is problematic, especially given the commendable calls already being made for a “global satoyama.” A more comprehensive understanding of both the ideal of satoyama and the contemporary reality are clearly needed to guide efforts towards a more sustainable society.

This satoyama section of KJ 75 aims to contribute to such clearer understanding.

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Brian Williams, an artist, has resided in a restored farmhouse in a satoyama-type village near Kyoto for a quarter century, and has lived and painted in Japan for 38 years. His conviction that a landscape painter should also work to preserve and restore that landscape complicates and enriches his life.

brianwilliamsart.com

 

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