SPECIAL SECTION: THE WORLDS OF SATOYAMA

Nature, Inhabited

Winifred Bird

Satoyama describes a rural Japanese landscape made up mainly of managed woodlands and grasslands, rice fields, and the network of waterways and reservoirs associated with them. Underlying those elements, however, satoyama refers to certain principles of living on the land that belong no more to Japan than to any place long and sustainably cultivated by humans.

Satoyama is land modified but not over-simplified; used but not monopolized. It is an ecosystem biodiverse by virtue of custom and culture which predates environmentalism, wise stewardship born out of necessity more than ideology. It is characterized by a variety of uses; by the values of routine care, restraint, and community-scale management; by interconnection and complexity — by much, in other words, that is antithetic to short-term monetary profit and short-sightedly efficient modern agriculture. Yet it is perhaps that very “inefficiency” that opens up the space for human use and biodiversity to coexist within the satoyama landscape.

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Winifred Bird is a freelance writer living in rural Japan.
Her work focuses on the natural world and people’s place within it.

www.winifredbird.com

Graphic by Seiju Morita Einarsen, a film student at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York City.

 

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