Satoyama: The Real and the Ideal

The Ideal and the Realfrom Kyoto Journal 75

http://www.kyotojournal.org

In Japanese, the ideal implied in those sentimental scrolls is often summed up in one word: satoyama. Literally ham-let-mountain, satoyama has become something of a buzzword, and features extensively in Japanese government lit-erature for the October 2010 COP10 conference on biodiversity in Nagoya. Like all buzzwords, satoyama is often used with less than complete com-prehension 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 con-temporary reality are clearly needed to guide efforts towards a more sustainable society. This satoyama section of KJ 75 aims to contribute to such a clearer understanding.

MOST MARKEDLY antithetical to the American Midwest’s vast agro-industrial grid of croplands, satoyama is a curvi-linear mosaic of mixed forests, grass-

lands, rice paddies and other fields, with streams, ponds and reservoirs, most of this centered along the base of a moun-tain or hill. The satoyama ideal, born out of an intimate and even reveren-tial connection with nature, entails liv-ing with the land and on it, without arrogating it exclusively to human use — living in a sustained way over many generations.

Sufficient productivity and biodiver-sity can coexist over the long term, as they have all over the world in the past. Precisely by allowing and even foster-ing other life, we enable human life as well to be sustained over time. This is, in essence, what a global satoyama should mean. Japan’s satoyama is but one exam-ple of traditional cultures thriving with-out depleting biodiversity. The island of Bali, for instance, has supported a dense population with a vibrant culture, while conserving much of its rich biodiversity. Until as recently as the 1940s even an apex predator like the tiger survived on the island.

By Brian Williams

24 | kyoto journal 75 | kyotojournal.org/biodiversity

The Ideal and the Real

Above: FAmily crests with motiFs From nAture; opposite: sAtoyAmA lAndscApes From Across JApAn, photogrAphs by Kit tAKenAgA

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 idyl-lic 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.

T h e W o r l d s o f s a T o y a m a

Thus, protecting biodiversity involves “not only preserving pristine envi-ronments, such as wilderness, but also conserving human-influenced natural environments, such as farmlands and secondary forest, that people have devel-oped and maintained sustainably over a long time. These traditional produc-tion landscapes — and the sustainable practices and knowledge they represent — are increasingly threatened in many parts of the world, due for example, to urbanization, industrialization, and rural population increase and decrease.” These are the words of Japan’s Ministry of the Environment, in explaining its global ‘Satoyama Initiative.’* An even greater threat, conveniently ignored, is the widespread adoption of ruthlessly efficient modern agro-industrial prac-tices — which are fossil-fuel and agro-chemical intensive, and destructive to both biodiversity and soil quality.

Perhaps the crucial characteristic of a satoyama landscape is that human dominion is not complete. There are gaps which other life forms exploit, to be in turn exploited. Crucian carp spawn in paddies. Soon their fingerlings are preyed upon by herons and egrets, who hunt those paddies for tadpoles and aquatic insects as well. Trees of no value to people are allowed to subsist in these satoyama forests, and as a result so does any life that depends on those trees for sustenance. There one can find delicious mushrooms and delicate fruit hanging from vines. Birds and insects are abun-dant. Flying squirrels glide from giant cypresses spared in the sacred forests of the Shinto shrines. The rivers run pure, and their fish never give out. Snakes and wild boar, weasels and dragonflies — the list goes on and on. And so does all of that life, together with that of the humans provided for by this landscape.

IMPORTANTLY, many of the hab-itats for this bustling life would not have existed were it not for traditional human land usage. The satoyama world both fosters and harbors a range of ecosystems found neither in wholly wild regions nor in more modern agro-industrial and urban zones. True, pad-


T h e W o r l d s o f s a T o y a m a ; T h e I d e a l a N d T h e r e a l

* For more on the Japanese government’s Satoyama Initiative, see Catherine Knight’s article in our online edition

Above: villAge, Fields And seA; bottom: spider lilies (higanbana), bloom Along the edges oF rice pAddies in september, FuKuoKA preFecture, photogrAphs by Kit tAKenAgA

middle: mAn As pArt oF nAture —trAditionAl sAtoyAmA lAndscApe depicted by FAmous JApAnese pAinter hAyAmi gyoshu

kyotojournal.org/biodiversity | kyoto journal 75 | 27

"What we now understand from remote sensing data is that

agriculture is such a dominant part of land use world wide that

if we're talking about where is the habitat, where is the biodiver-

sity going to come from, a verysubstantial part of the habitat is

in or around agricultural areas. yet we have not been managing

our agricultural areas as habitat. We don't even think of them

as habitat. i think it's a revolutionary thing to be thinking about

how we can do agriculture in a way that does that."

— sara sherr, Founder of Ecoagriculture Partners

dies replaced some marshy areas, but they also created wetlands where none had existed, to the benefit of salaman-ders and egrets. Satoyama woodlands are normally sunnier and airier than natural forests, and support a different undergrowth. Grassland domains such as those around Mt. Aso in Kyushu would soon revert to woodland with-out the time-honored seasonal burning that has kept the trees back. Bamboo groves traditionally planted on river levies for reinforcement grow into yet another type of habitat. Satoyama-type land use engenders bountiful and varied plant and animal life, and such ecosys-tems are more resistant to infestations, less prone to radical population fluctua-tions, and also more resilient to disasters and changing climate.

Interconnectedness and continu-ity are two essential properties of the satoyama forests, fields and streams, ensuring the survival of species that use more than a single niche. Foxes spend their days in the woods but in the eve-ning hunt the grasslands and paddy borders. Swans from Siberia roost in marshy areas and ponds, but forage in the winter stubble fields. Herons feed in the paddies, but nest in the trees. In the waters of a flowing stream, firefly larvae subsist on small freshwater snails. Then on wet nights in March they surface to climb the earthen banks, burrow in and pupate, emerging in June for their dance of light. They will mate on bushes and tree branches overhanging the water, and their eggs will drop back into the stream that was their cradle. Carp fin-gerlings who survived their vulnerable youth in flooded paddies swim down the irrigation canals to the rivers and ponds, and fish as varied as eels, salmon, and ayu sweetfish swim up those same rivers to spawn. Each species finds its nooks and havens.

THOUGH SHIRETOKO PENIN-SULA at the northeastern tip of Hok-kaido supports the densest population of brown bears in the world, and while the Shirakami Sanchi in northern Honshu may well be Earth’s largest remaining tract of virgin beech forest, as a whole

cultivAted systems: AreAs in which At leAst 30% oF the lAnd is cultivAted. source: millennium ecosystem Assessment

sAtoyAmA lAndscApes in, Above, bAli (photogrAph by stewArt wAchs) And in nepAl (photogrAphy by sAJAl sthrApit) contrAst with single crop pAtterns in KAnsAs

Japan is not distinguished by vast areas of untouched wilderness. What Japan does have to offer, historically speak-ing, is one of the premier examples of an environment inhabited and managed by people to the benefit of both human and non-human life, a montage of stable ecosystems. Despite occasional famine or denuded hillsides, Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868) was a society that produced

virtually no waste, and it thrived for centuries in a land of rich and abundant biodiversity. Tokyo Bay, now a polluted water wasteland, was a treasure chest of seafood and home to countless water-fowl, even though one of the world’s larg-est cities at the time crowded its shores.

It is precisely this coexistence with wild plants and animals that offers valu-able lessons for our era of degraded farm-


lands, monoculture forests and rivers polluted by agricultural and urban run-off. Efforts to conserve biological diver-sity still largely focus on preserving wild habitats such as coral reefs and rainfor-ests. One strategy considered crucial to that goal is an outgrowth of the ‘green revolution’ which, through the use of improved crop strains, agrochemicals, machinery and GMOs, maximizes effi-ciency on present agricultural lands, and thus hopes to curtail their further expansion. But from the standpoint of biodiversity, it is precisely the cultivated lands that we ignore at our peril. They make up approximately one quarter of Earth’s land surface (the prime produc-tive portion of it) and they are being damaged and expanded at the very same time. The satoyama alternative shows that a rich variety of species can coexist and even prosper with judicious human use of the land. It is time to realize that agricultural areas can and indeed must also function as habitat, and readjust our modern practice accordingly.

To the degree possible, urban areas also need to incorporate these princi-ples. Humanity passed a fateful mile-stone several years back, when more than half the population of the planet became urban dwellers. This figure could rise to 80 percent by 2030. With-out major changes, life in these dysto-pian cities will be desperate, brutish and short. Some starts are being made, such as rooftop and wall gardens small and large. Even the Sears Tower in Chi-cago, once the world’s tallest building, is spending several hundred million dol-lars to green its roof areas, with an eye to reducing cooling expenses and enhanc-ing appeal. Greening the roofs of a city will negate its heat island phenomenon. And it is a short step from decorative plantings to food production and habi-tat creation. Urban rivers are also badly in need of redemption. Who wouldn’t prefer a stream with fish, turtles and waterbirds over an open sewer? Instead of fleeing to the countryside, we need to bring it into our cities. Other life will make our urban areas more sustainable and more livable for us.

PlEasE don’t misrEad this, but Japan is the most dammed country in the world. the lengthy archipelago has virtually no unblocked streams left, with more than 210,000 dams in all. of these, over 2,500 are so-called ‘large dams’ taller than 15 meters, but likely the most ubiquitous are the check dams, big and small. in toyama prefecture, formerly Japan’s most spec-tacular mountain valley with its highest waterfalls, these check dams reach their most colossal absurdity — there is even a museum devoted to them!

Check dams are built to counter erosion and control flood damage. and while they can serve some function in these regards (although perhaps only until they become choked with sediment) generally the erosion and mountain slope destruction associated with the dams’ construction outweigh any such positive benefits. as

smoTherING sTreams & haBITaTs

well, their impact on biodiversity and water quality is also an unmitigated disaster, cumulatively far larger than any mega-proj-ect. Check dams create an insurmount-able obstacle to fish migrating either up or downstream, and block free passage of other animals in the current, such as giant salamanders. they markedly distort the composition of sediment flows away from gravel and sands and towards very fine silt, which has clearly adverse effects on river, pond, lake and seashore habitats. Where check dams also impound water, the ensu-ing stagnation and trapped organic matter inevitably impair water quality. Finally, they are singularly unlovely. if you’d like to see for yourself what a Japanese check dam is like, and along the way inspect concrete embankments and step-blocked river beds seriously clogged with cement, just head to the nearest hills and follow any stream. as surely as water will wet you, you’ll find what you’re looking for.

Given the ubiquity of check dams in Japan, in years to come when innovative, more natural ways of dealing with erosion and flooding are developed, the removal of check dams and resuscitation of Japan’s smothered streams will likely become a growth industry. may that era dawn soon..5

By Brian Williams

Flooded rice terrAces in niigAtA preFecture, photogrAph by Kit tAKenAgA

By Brian Williams


beyond sAtoyAmA is the bAcK country or okuyama “shAdow plAy” (mt. tAnigAwAdAKe, gummA preF.), below: pArAbolic pAinting oF A sAtoumi lAndscApe oF lAKe biwA, both worKs by briAn williAms

THESE, THEN, ARE THE LESSONS of satoyama. Over the past century, however, and particularly the past fifty years, Japan has to a large degree lost both its traditional rural ways of life and its satoyama ecosystems. As people migrated from countryside to city, from agriculture to blue and white collar jobs, farmland increasingly gave way to subur-ban sprawl and industrial development. And in more remote areas formerly cul-tivated land has been dissolving back into wilderness. Grasslands are giving way to brush and then forest; paddies are growing thick with kudzu, saplings and bamboo.

At first glance these latter transforma-tions appear benign: If land “goes back to nature,” doesn’t biodiversity bene-fit? But the argument is problematic on two levels. Even on a local scale, the loss of satoyama often means the land-scape becomes le s s d iver se. In Japan’s hot, humid cl imate open patches of grass-lands and coppiced woods left untended soon become choked, unstable tan-gles of vegetation, prone to wildly fluctuating species populations, con-tagions and other afflictions — a less stable and less diverse community of plants and animals.

And worse is the way satoyama is too often “tended” in the modern era: mixed forests converted to uniform tree plan-tations; rivers lined with concrete; rice paddies straightened out and enlarged, with the ditches and streams that sup-ply their water also straightened, stepped and paved, destroying the habitats they formerly provided. Add to this a bar-rage of chemical fertilizer, insecticide

and herbicide. Japan produces perhaps two percent of the world’s food, but con-sumes about ten percent of the globe’s agrochemicals to do so. The ponds, marshes, lakes, estuaries and tidal flats collectively designated satoumi have suffered a similar fate, and are now either filled in or polluted, eutrophic and hemmed with concrete. In short, the formerly picturesque and richly biodiverse satoyama and the eco-ser-vices they formerly provided — including flood control and water purification, a wealth of native foods, and spir-itual values — are

severely impaired.

Pulling back to a global perspec-

tive, we realize the loss is even more serious. Where

once we harvested food from nearby for-est, paddy, and garden, we now extract it from corporate megafarms in China or California. Where nearby coppiced woods once provided firewood along with habitat for wildlife, we now pump our fuel from miles beneath the Gulf of Mexico. It can be argued that these changes have brought gains in effi-ciency and material wealth that offset the loss in biodiversity they also inevita-

bly entail. As we weigh these trade-offs, however, what is critical is that we keep our perspective as broad as possible. We trade satoyama not only for convenience and short-term productivity, but also for degraded pseudo-wilderness, denatured farmland, an ever-growing waste stream, and greater dependence on fossil fuels.

As we belatedly reassess that trad-eoff, we must relearn the lesson of gen-uine satoyama: Exploiting nature for human sustenance is not wrong if it

allows other life to co-exist. This is not idealistic. It is far-sightedly

practical. True satoyama-style land use achieves this: Half the endan-gered species on

Japan’s Red List sur-vive in the sanctuary of

remaining satoyama and its vestiges, which originally

accounted for fully 40 percent of the national territory of Japan

— 700 million hectares of assorted agricultural areas plus 800 million of secondary forests. These areas include second-growth forests with highly var-ied cover; grasslands created by human activity; vast paddy areas that also function as seasonal wetlands; river-sides planted with bamboo groves; and marshes, brooks, lakes and ponds with tended shores. All of these created, and to a limited degree still provide, a range of habitats different from the original face of the land, but arguably as diverse — and far more so than the industrial scale monocultures so common today. In this section, we strive to illuminate these interconnecting habitats of the endangered satoyama world. j

1. Okuyama, the back country, the upper reaches of the watershed, remote forests2. Golden eagle, inuwashi (Aquila chrysaetos)3. Japanese serow, kamoshika (Capricornis crispus)4. Black kite, tombi (Milvus migrans)5. The Honshu wolf, ohkami (extinct since 1905)6. Japanese moon bear, tsukinowa guma (Ursus thibetanus). Due to loss of habitat, encounters with humans have been increasing; listed as “vulnerable.” 7. Japanese otter, kawauso (lutra

lutra whitely) — once prevalent, now crtically endangered, last sighted 19798. Swimming hole9. Bamboo grove embankments10. Ayu fisherman. Ayu, or sweetfish, (Plecoglossus altivelis) is a delicacy and a favorite of sport fishermen11. Great Egret, oh-sagi, (Egretta alba) — but Little Egret, ko-sagi (Egretta garzatta) is most common12 Spur dykes — slow river flow and create back eddies in...13. ....wando areas14. Grey Heron, aosagi (Ardea cinerea)15. Yusuichi — low-lying areas set aside


“. . . our tools are better than we are,

and grow better, faster than we do.

they suffice to crack the atom, to

command the tides. But they do not

suffice for the oldest task in human

history: to live on a piece of land

without spoiling it.” —aldo leopold

cAlligrAphy by KAmpo hArAdA

Nature, InhabitedSatoyama 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 environ-mentalism, 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. —Winifred Bird

sato village yama mountain

T h e W o r l d s o f s a T o y a m a : N a T u r e , I N h a B I T e d

K e y


to absorb flood waters16. Shijimi clams (Corbicula japonica)17. Salmon, trout, other freshwater fish18. Satogawa — managed rivers19. Managed grassland (jinkou sougen)20. Wild boar, inoshishi (Sus scrofa)21. Japanese spotted deer, nihon shika (Cervus nippon)22. Vegetable patch— daikon, cabbage, eggplants, tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, satoimo yams, taro, ginger (shoga), pumpkins, beans, green peppers, shiso, garlic, burdock, green onions, bees, butterflies, etc.23. Rice paddies — habitats for

crustaceans, snails, salamanders, frogs, dragonflies, water plants, snakes, even fish, waterbirds, etc.24. Raccoon dog, tanuki (Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus)25. Pond — often harbor lotus, turtles or carp26. Persimmon tree, kaki (Diospyros kaki)27. Japanese macaque, nihonzaru (Macaca fuscata) often raid gardens due to habitat loss28. Dosojin — stone markers of Shinto or Buddhist deities that protect the village29. Fox, kitsune (Vulpes vulpes japonica)

30. Satoyama — managed forests near villages for firewood, timber, charcoal, food (wild vegetables and mushrooms, fruits, chestnuts, etc.)31. Japanese giant flying squirrel, musasabi (Petaurista leucogenys)32. Giant Salamander, ousanshou-uo (Megalobatrachus japonicus) — has survived over 20 million years, grows up to 1.5 meters, nocturnal, lives in cool, clear pools of mountain streams, “near-endangered.”33. Fireflies, hotaru34. Shinto shrine and sacred forest or ancient tree

35. Logs for cultivating shiitake mushrooms (Lentinula edodes) with kabuto-mushi, stag beetle36. Check dams 37. Gingko (Ginkgo biloba) — related to cycad, fossil record of 270 million years (Permian era)38. Ural owl, fukuro (Strix uralensis) 39. Fish trap40. River crabs, sawagani (Geothelphusa dehaani)41. Dragonfly, oniyanma (Anotogaster sieboldii), Japan’s largest dragonfly42. Reed beds43. Satoumi — lake or sea coastal zones

illustrAtion by seiJu moritA einArsen

LIKE ALL ELSE in the satoyama landscape, the satogawa (literally ‘hamlet-streams’) were adapted

over time to suit human needs. This was done in ways that did not diminish bio-diversity but allowed it to flourish in the new configurations.

Mountainous Japan, where a mere 17 percent or so of the land is flat and a good half of that is flood plains, is unsuited to permanent cultivation or habitation without extensive modifica-tions to the river systems. Accordingly, the early history of agriculture in Japan could be described as embodying such re-configurations. When the technology of rice cultivation crossed the sea from Korea around 400 B.C., the first areas to be ‘paddified’ were intramontane val-leys on the bits of flat land not normally subject to flooding. Building on this success, people expanded settlements gradually downstream and out onto the floodplains. As they did so, they devel-oped some ingenious methods to protect their paddies and homes from the peri-odic and often intense flooding that is a feature of a country with low but steep mountains and heavy rainfall.

First and foremost, bamboo was planted on dikes and embankments to reinforce them with its network of tough roots. Even today, just about anywhere in Japan, bamboo groves can be seen lin-ing long sections of rivers and streams. To cope with any flooding that would overwhelm their hand-built dikes, peo-ple set aside areas of land most prone to flooding, to function like giant sponges. These yuusuichi (literally, play-water-land) were the lowest lying areas, gen-erally marshy land to begin with, where flood water would be diverted so as to

minimize damage elsewhere. Next, they also made extensive use of spur dikes jut-ting out into rivers. These suisei or mizu-hane, worked to slow down the rush of the current. In the spaces between spur dikes, known as wando, this also created back eddies that would deposit sediment carried by the flow, sorting it as the back eddy slowed, from rough gravel to fin-est silt. All these strategies, each in its own way, resulted in the creation of eco-logical niches for a wide variety of plant and animal life to flourish, replacing previously existing natural habitat and/or creating new conditions for diverse organisms to thrive. These included dense bamboo groves, a wide variety of river sediments in the wando, and the marshy areas of the yuusuichi. The end result over the centuries was rivers adapted to human needs yet thriving with life: fish of all descriptions, water-fowl, freshwater shrimp and crabs, giant salamanders, shellfish, countless fireflies and many other beautiful insects. And also, of particularly contemporary rele-vance, rivers whose water flowed pure and clean, filtered by nature’s own water treatment plants.

All this began to change, first grad-ually with Japan’s Meiji-initiated tran-sition from an agricultural to an industrial-based economy, and then, in post-war Japan, with a vengeance. Nothing, it seems, was too sacred to sac-rifice to Economic Progress with its tacit presumptions of “fall behind and you’re done for.” In the early post-war period, with the country destitute and the cit-ies in ashes, forests all over Japan were cut down on an unprecedented scale, for lumber to rebuild. Resulting floods from denuded drainage areas brought calls for

various flood control measures. Politi-cians and construction companies soon realized that these presented an exceed-ingly lucrative proposition. Before many decades had passed, the country was in a paroxysm of river-related construction beyond any genuine necessity, ostensibly to prevent damage from ‘once-in-a-cen-tury’ floods, or to ensure adequate water resources for improbably rosy economic growth projections far removed from the eventual reality. At present, there is hardly a gully in Japan that doesn’t have at least one check dam (sabou damu). Concrete embankments line major por-tions of most rivers. Concrete steps and more check dams have been built into watercourses everywhere, preventing fish and giant salamanders from migrat-ing upstream to spawn. Kingfishers find that decent earthen embankment nest-ing sites are in very short supply, as do the larvae of fireflies, which pupate there. Rivers that once teemed with life are now often little more than agricul-tural wastewater conduits, their waters laced with herbicides, pesticides, and the chemical fertilizers that help create the red tides afflicting lakes and coastal sea areas (the satoumi) in recent years. The rivers, natural arteries of the land, are seriously clogged from source to river mouth with ‘concrete-sterol.’ The once beautiful satogawa of Japan are, beyond any debate, a seriously endangered spe-cies, victims of an entrenched and per-nicious construction pork-barrel system and a serious lack of understanding for the wide range of eco-services such rivers and streams can provide when healthy. w


By Brian WilliamsSatogawa: River Arteries of Life

pAinting oF the nAgArA river by briAn williAms

T h e W o r l d s o f s a T o y a m a : s a T o G a W a

螢 F i r E F l i E s


BY WINIFRED BIRD

ph

ot

og

rA

ph by o

hA

rA r

ei

“ah, the cunning fireflies!

Being chased they hide themselves

in the moonlight!”

arouNd The eNd of JuNe, when

the summer nights begin to resemble a

damp wool blanket thrown over our house

and the rainy season pounds relentlessly

onward, my husband and i like to drive out

to a village in the nearby mountains called

oroshi. We park on one of the slender

roads that run between sunken rice fields,

turn off the engine, and let our eyes adjust

to the heavy darkness. in a minute or two,

pinpoints of yellowish light begin to swarm

up the grassy banks towards us. Fireflies!

the omnivorous beetles use their flashing

rear ends to flirt with potential mates. What

attraction we with our dull shadowy skin

hold for them i don’t know, but every year

without fail, they come.

my husband and i are only the most

recent generation in a nation of legend-

ary firefly enthusiasts. at least as early as

the heian era (794-1185), noblemen and

women enjoyed nighttime firefly-view-

ing excursions to the countryside. For the

ancient Japanese the firefly was a symbol of

both love and war. it was the quintessential

sign of summer in endless poems and chil-

dren’s songs, the motif of lacquer objects

and sword furnishings, and the centerpiece

of a charming episode in the world’s first

novel, the tale of Genji, in which the hero

provides his brother a glimpse of a beautiful

woman’s face by releasing a bagful of fire-

flies in her bedchamber. in other legends,

they were said to be the spirits of warriors

who fell in the monumental 12th-century

battle between the minamoto and taira

clans.

more recently the firefly has become a

symbol of Japan’s bygone rural landscape.

along country roads one sees painted

wooden signs advertising the local “fire-

fly village,” that idyllic if increasingly rare

place where the rivers run clean, the lights

aren’t too bright, and the banks are still

grassy (three requirements of firefly life).

apparently, the once ubiquitous insect

has entered a global decline. details of this

unfolding tragedy remain hazy, but some

blame bright lights for interfering with

the insect’s ability to send its mating mes-

sages. others point to water pollution and

still others to the over-development of riv-

erside environments. Whatever the cause,

one more piece of what makes the world

an enchanting and mysterious place is slip-

ping away.

and so we environmentalists find our-

selves concocting reasons to save a crea-

ture we have long been satisfied simply

to love. Fireflies are indicator species, we

entreat, ambassadors for dark nights and

pure streams, without which they (and

quite likely we too) will slowly fade to black.

they are the potential source of medicines

and biomimetic inspiration and who knows

what else. yet in the end these arguments,

like all piecemeal cases for conserving bio-

diversity, are nothing compared to the pure

glory of a glowing, flying creature that pre-

dates lite-Brites by 50 million years. if fire-

flies have a meaning, it is that the world is

beautiful to us, that we are part of it and our

hearts were made to love it. that, for me,

is reason enough to fight for fireflies and

all the other magnificent diversity of life on

earth. 　　　　　　　　螢

s See “Bringing Back Tokyo Firelies”: kyotojournal.org/biodiversity/fireflies.htm


“SUSTAINABLE USE of marine resources” is hardly a phrase that’s been associated

with Japan in recent years. Continued hunting and slaughtering of whales and dolphins as well as the Japanese gov-ernment’s opposition to a proposed ban on the international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna — all of these have fueled worldwide outrage against the seafood-loving island nation. Yet in a handful of Japan’s coastal communities, a counter-current is emerging that looks back to a far older history of sustainable marine use: satoumi.

Though the history is ancient, the word was coined in 1998 by Kyushu University oceanographer Yanagi Tet-suo. Just as “satoyama” combines the characters for “village” and “mountain,” satoumi juxtaposes “village” and “sea” to describe coastal zones — of seas, estuar-ies or lakes — that are highly biodiverse and productive, yet far from untouched. Humans have been harvesting clams, oysters, crabs and a myriad of other sea-side creatures for thousands of years, and we’ve been adding our waste to coastal waters for just as long. Through both

By WiniFrEd Bird

Satoumi: Wise Use of Coastal Zones

of these activities, we take part in the nutrient cycles that link land and sea.

Often our involvement is less than beneficial: we either take too many nutrients out of the water (overhar-vesting) or put too many in (pollution). Yet what Yanagi Tetsuo wants people to understand is that through wise and careful management, humans also have the potential to enrich the coastal eco-systems we use, in a kind of symbiosis. In moderation, some types of wastewa-ter can actually increase the productivity of coastal seas by adding vital nutrients, and humans can help return those nutri-

pAinting oF A bAy in southern shiKoKu by briAn williAms

umaJI VIllaGe sprawls across a broad swath of mountainous eastern Kochi Prefecture. sparsely populated but known for its yuzu and cedar products, in summer it bustles with city people enjoying fishing and recreation on its rivers. traversing the village proper is the yasuda river ravine. at one time, stretches of the waterway, mainly in the residential area, were straightened out, producing a succession of flat, even-depth rapids inhospitable for fish. in 2007, the head of a farm cooperative had a dream: a stream abundant in aquatic life running through the village’s center would enhance its production of health products and its identity as a region that nurtures life.

For a river to sustain diverse species it must have varied habitats; currents, deep pools and sandbars must exist in harmony. the yasuda river needed its deep pools and

sandy shoals restored. spur dikes, a flood control device used since ancient times, were utilized, with rocks arranged where flood water would strike harshly, to lessen its impact. Construction was managed by the village and a public works firm; vehicles and materials provided by a local construction company and agricultural association. it took just over one day and was more successful than predicted. the spur dikes diverted flood water from shores, slowing currents and cre-ating back eddies that first vigorously drilled pools, and then, where the currents slowed, formed gravel and sand banks as sediment dropped out, thus protecting the riverbanks. the riverbed environments changed dramatically — naturally. Zero problems with flooding, the reason for the original damag-ing reconfiguration of the river.

half a year later, the summer 2008 fish

survey found that despite hot midsummer days, habitat density around the spur dikes had burgeoned, especially for amago trout, who, along with their spawn, were now spared due to the cool deep water created by the spur dikes. these stream fish, glacial period survivors, must now live with global warming. We are exposing many life forms to the threat of extinction. often, creating an environment where creatures of the natural world can survive along with humans is comparatively easy and inexpensive. in our daily lives, such opportunities abound; we habitually overlook them. Umaji Village is a shining example: it utilized surplus construc-tion project stockpiles of stone material for the benefit of both the public and nature. 5

TranslaTed by Jennifer TeeTer and Okazaki Takayuki

resTorING a rIVer QuIcKly & cheaply By FUKUdomE shUBUn

T h e W o r l d s o f s a T o y a m a : s a T o u m I


these managed areas which are used and fished but also really protected and sus-tainable over the long haul.

I love the notion [in Japan] of some forests being where the gods live. Some areas are sacred in a way, because of the nature, so that’s a great notion, but it doesn’t mean you can’t use anything. There are two other categories: inten-sive use, like monoculture, that’s highly productive but not nature; and then, places where you really do use some-thing, but at the same time honor it. I really like the balance within human approaches to the world. We’re not very good at that. In the Chesapeake Bay we have people who are very commit-ted to protecting the environment, and we have fishermen who are very deter-mined to protect their rights. Everything becomes polarized and what gets lost is this notion of balance.

Nutrient overload from land sources is a big problem in coastal areas worldwide. Aside from limiting inputs, some here in Japan suggest that increasing what we’re taking out — more harvesting — might help.

That’s certainly valid, and you have different ways of doing that. You can grow plants, including seaweed and so forth, and that helps remove nutrients. You can have oysters that feed on phy-toplankton that removes the [excess] nutrients and then the oysters remove the phytoplankton. But if you don’t really understand the material cycle and you’re missing pieces of it, that can be a problem.

With ecology it’s complicated, and that’s why biodiversity is important. It gives you balance between all different parts of the food web, so that if one part crashes the whole system doesn’t fall apart. You have to be careful of unilinear thinking, for example [the idea that you] can just use one species to completely control this cycling. If you get a dis-ease — which happens in monocultures — then that collapses and your whole system is out of whack, and all these nutrients you thought you were going to be taking out are just out there. In the Chesapeake Bay this is what happened to us. In the 19th century it was really a no-holds-barred approach to oysters. We had huge oyster reefs in this estuary, like coral reefs, breaking the surface at low tide, and they just tore them down. It was really like cutting down old growth forest. That really helped to throw the whole ecosystem off, and it took a long time to feel the full ramifications.

Do you think human use can actually ben-efit biodiversity in coastal seas?

It varies. The concept of satoumi is really valuable and can help us as we struggle with this issue of balance, but if you look at it as this three-part para-digm, then the balance needs to include all three: national parks — areas that are special for various reasons, then other areas that are intensively worked, then satoumi which is this wonderful place in the middle where you go for sus-tainable use. d

ents to land through fishing and gath-ering shellfish and seaweed. Conversely, only coastal areas that are diverse and productive will be economically sustain-able in the long run.

For the time being, that sort of mutu-ally beneficial relationship remains an ideal rather than a reality in Japan. Large-scale commercial fishing began about 300 years ago, and by the 1980s chronic overfishing had devastated many coastal fish populations. Effluent from urban areas and from chemical-inten-sive croplands and factories was draining into bays, overloading them with nitro-gen and phosphorous and leading to “red tides,” algal blooms that rob the marine ecosystem of oxygen. Public works proj-ects have covered about half the Japa-nese coastline in concrete. Perhaps the most infamous was the project to trans-form a tidal wetland in western Kyushu’s Isahaya Bay into agricultural land with a 7-kilometer dike, completed in 1997 despite widespread protest. The dike altered water flow and destroyed both wild habitat and the livelihoods of fish-ermen and seaweed farmers.

There are encouraging signs of change. In 2007 the Japanese govern-ment adopted the creation of healthy satoumi as a national policy, marking a shift from simply regulating the dis-charge of pollutants to managing the coastal ecosystem as a whole. Simi-lar concepts such as Integrated Coastal Zone Management are catching on internationally. One person inspired by the satoumi concept is Jack Greer, a jour-nalist, poet, and employee of America’s Maryland Sea Grant College. He has written about marine science and policy and the Chesapeake Bay for 30 years. We asked Greer how satoumi might apply to coastal management around the world.

winiFred bird: What appeals to you about the idea of satoumi?

JAcK greer: [Satoumi] gives a philosoph-ical underpinning to the notion of using enclosed seas in varying ways — protect-ing some of them [from any use], using some of them for very intensive pur-poses like aquaculture, and then having

pAinting by briAn williAms. Bundles of reeds from the Lake Biwa marshes, harvested in autumn and dried over the winter, destined for blinds or thatch.


laKe BIWa, Japan’s largest lake, is said to be some four million years old, making it one of the oldest lakes in the world. situated in the middle of the omi Basin, surrounded by 800–1200 meter-high mountain ranges, fed by 460 streams but drained by just one river, the lake and the surrounding area form a single, basin-shaped 4,000 sq. km isolated watershed. With its long history, the lake and the region are home to over 1,100 species of native fauna and flora, including about 50 that are endemic, of which 15 are types of fish.

the lake was designated a ramsar wetland site

of in-

ternational importance in 1993 and the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) has named it a Global 200 eco-region; a large unit of land or water containing a geographically distinct assemblage of species, natural communities, and environmental conditions.

now the lake, and adjacent lagoons and rivers, have become infested bybluegill, large-mouth bass (pictured), and other invasive fish. north americanbluegill were first released by the prefecture’s fisheries station in the 1960s. in 1974 the first largemouth bass were found in the lake. largemouth bass were originally imported by a Japanese entrepreneur in 1925 but by the 1970s most areas in Japan had banned the fish because these aggressive predators were depleting native stocks. still, the species’ popularity as a sports fish most likely led to it being deliberately spread by sports fishers in the 1970s and 1980s.

other alien fish are former aquatic pets, released into the lake when they grew too large or aggressive for their owners to care for them. today lake Biwa’s waters contain north american snapping turtles, gar and

even amazonian piranha, threatening wildlife and humans alike.

Without natural enemies and with ample fish and shrimp to feed on, invasive species multiply rapidly, endangering both the eco-system and the local economy. the number of native willow gudgeon (moroko), a type of minnow, has plunged since 1990, when a sharp increase ofbluegill was first identified. the impact has been especially severe for the resident fishermen who depend on such staple species, as well as those who produce and sell famed local delicacies like funa-zushi, a rice and carp dish whose price has soared as catches of crucian carp (nigorobuna) have tumbled to one-ninth those of 1979.

shiga’s prefectural government has tried to protect native species, passing a law in

2002 prohibiting release of largemouth bass and other alien species. Breaches however, still occur, including the

release of bass in an upstream dam reservoir. in the lake proper, the argument

is now moot; largemouth bass and bluegill, among others, are here to stay.

over 2000 alien species inhabit eco-systems throughout Japan, including 97 animal and plant species that the ministry of Environment recognizes as posing grave adverse effects. the ministry claimed these species are responsible for large declines in the numbers of indigenous wildlife, including mammals (19 percent), reptiles (67 percent), amphibians (21 percent), and brackish or freshwater fish (25 percent). For example, in the nansei shoto, a chain of subtropi-cal islands in southwestern Japan rich in endemic species, endangered amami rabbits and okinawa rails are now falling easy prey to introduced mongoose and feral dogs.

aN eco-reGIoNal soluTIoNin 2004, WWF joined with the Bridgestone Corporation, a Japanese tire manufacturer, to implement an eco-regional approach, “lake Biwa — sustainable Environment for local Communities.” this project aims to protect freshwater ecosystems in the watershed

and to restore the weakened relationship between man and nature vis a vis freshwater. local communities and municipal govern-ments have joined in implementing the ap-proach in the eastern part of the basin, along with employees of the Bridgestone plant in hikone.

in the project, local residents are respon-sible for monitoring, identifying and reporting on aquatic species, thus building local public capacity and raising public conservation awareness. in 23 surveys conducted be-tween 2005 and 2009, residents identified 22 fish species, including 16 rare and endan-gered species, and they found a number of locations fed by natural spring water, which serve as habitats of indigenous wildlife that can live only in clean water, such as upstream fat minnow, Japanese sculpin and fireflies. they also discovered that land-locked anadromous fish in upper streams, including common freshwater goby, ayu, and Biwa trout, are still migrating seasonally, swimming downstream to the lake as ocean-going fish commonly do, then struggling their way upstream to spawn. Even in these surveyed areas, though, the incidence of alien species was on the rise, although their total number is still small.

While confirming that the eastern region still maintains native biodiversity, the surveys suggest increasing risk from alien species. With improved information sharing and the presence of local base facilities, people living nearby will be able to monitor the state of these ecosystems by themselves, enabling government to take appropriate actions. an encouraging opinion poll by the prefec-ture showed that 90 percent of residents interested in the issue support measures to eradicate invasive species.

the presence of so many tenacious local monitors should help to curtail further violations and raise community awareness regarding invasive species. such a system is indispensable to protecting what is left of lake Biwa’s unique biodiversity, and to ad-dressing the risks of invasive alien species. 5

INVaders of laKe BIWa

By Komori shiGEKi

lAKe biwA, pAinting by briAn williAms

s also see “Is lake Biwa Becoming anoxic?” kyotojournal.org/biodiversity/anoxic.htm


Paddy Ecosystems: Diverse or Despoiled?

By WiniFrEd Bird

AS SUNLIGHT GLINTS OFF the surface of a flooded rice paddy, a great egret stands

statue-like, leg raised and neck half-extended in intense concentration. Then, with such sudden speed and grace that one scarcely believes the bird has moved at all, it jabs its long beak into the water, gulps down a frog, and returns to its serene pose. From a crack in the ancient stone wall bordering the paddy, a lizard watches unblinkingly, and from somewhere in the forest nearby a mon-key cries. Life in one of Japan’s most ancient rural environments goes on.

Rice paddies cover approximately ten percent of the Japanese archipelago and provide the nation with its most indis-pensible culinary staple. According to a newly-published list from the Farm and Nature Research Center (No to Shizen no Kenkyujo) in Fukuoka pre-fecture, they are also home to a whop-ping 5,668 plant and animal species: giant water bugs that feast on fish and frogs; water speedwell, East Indian lotus, and meadow fleabane; fairy shrimp; and more, and more, and more.

Not all methods of rice production foster biodiversity, of course. Increased use of agro-chemicals, modernization of paddy infrastructure, and changing cul-tivation practices have impacted paddy biodiversity and pushed many species dangerously close to extinction. Yet at its best, a rice paddy is both resource and habitat, a place where humans are just one amidst a riotous crowd of users. In the following interview Dr. Yama-moto Shori, leader of the Research Project for Biodiversity in Paddy Land-scapes at Ibaraki Prefecture’s National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sci-ences, discusses how paddy agriculture has impacted Japan’s biodiversity and how the paddy ecosystem has changed in recent years.

T h e W o r l d s o f s a T o y a m a : r I c e p a d d I e s

photogrAph by Kit tAKenAgA

winiFred bird: Why are rice fields and irrigation networks important for wild spe-cies in Japan? yamamoto Shiori: First, the paddy itself is a wide, shallow, seasonal body of stand-ing water that provides habitat for many aquatic species. Second, because pad-dies require irrigation systems, networks of various aquatic ecosystems such as ponds and canals are formed. Irrigated paddies must be bound by small levees, so there’s an extensive boundary area between land and water. The levees cre-ate habitats for amphibians, which are then eaten by birds and other predators.

Another point is that paddies spread as a set with woodlands and grasslands, because people needed a steady supply of feed for draft animals, water, and fer-tilizer (fallen leaves, grasses, and other plant material).

Finally, because rice farming has such a long history, most suitable land has been converted to paddies, and almost all the species that originally inhab-ited wet lowlands have come to depend on paddies. Biodiversity in rice farming areas is made up of species adapted to managed, or “secondary,” environments. Put another way, we can say that over 2,000 years or so of paddy agriculture,


species that could not adapt to second-ary nature were weeded out. Neverthe-less, biodiversity is thought to be high, with many types of aquatic life such as wetland plants, aquatic insects, fishes, amphibians, and birds.

Can you give any examples of wild species that have adapted to or become dependent on rice fields or the surrounding irrigation networks? Almost no species have been proven to depend entirely on paddies. The only exceptions are certain paddy weeds such as konagi (Monochoria vaginalis) that were introduced from abroad along with rice cultivation technologies. On the other hand, we know of a number of species for which the paddy plays an extremely important role. In particu-lar, paddies form the primary breeding location for frogs and most other ani-mals that live in standing water, as well as for some dragonfly species. The grey-faced buzzard (a small raptor, Butastur indicus) also uses the levees of paddies as its main hunting ground (it eats small animals such as frogs), and is said to be losing habitat as paddies are abandoned and the grass on banks is no longer cut.

How have the use of agrochemicals and the increased use of concrete infrastruc-ture, such as in irrigation canals, impacted biodiversity? It’s not entirely clear just how much agricultural chemicals impact wildlife. Many people say that the decline in predator species such as the giant water bug (Lethocerus deyrollei) can likely be explained by biomagnification of agro-chemicals in their bodies [biomagnifica-tion occurs when a substance becomes increasingly concentrated as it moves up the food chain, exposing predators like the giant water bug to large amounts]. However, chemical use increased at about the same time satoyama areas were abandoned and major moderniza-tion projects took place in rice fields. So the factors impacting biodiversity were multifaceted, and at present it’s hard to disentangle them.

Concrete irrigation canals are often used as a symbol of how modern agri-culture destroys nature, and it’s true that almost no plants and animals can be seen in canals lined on three sides with concrete. In particular, because few ani-mals can climb the concrete walls, they become cut off from the adjacent area

(such as those which connect to forest). However, most drainage canals now have concrete only on the side walls, while the bottom is dirt or stone. This allows aquatic plants to grow and irreg-ular surfaces to form on the floor, so a surprising number of various fish live in them.

Actually, many people think that it’s the division of irrigation and drainage functions and the stepped structure of canals, rather than the use of concrete per se, that’s had the largest impact on biodiversity. This division means that in any given canal water runs in just one direction (in the past drainage and irri-gation was usually done via the same waterway). In order to make the flow of water smoother, a large step is con-structed between the paddy and the canal as well as within the canal itself. Because of the one-way flow and the large sudden drops, it has become diffi-cult for fish to travel from the river, up small canals, and then into the paddy. This development is thought to have markedly impoverished the fish popula-tions in paddy areas. p

woodblocK print by ezAKi mitsuru


Japan’s Abandoned Satoyama Forests

MORE THAN TWO-THIRDS of the Japanese land mass is forested, and much of this is

managed satoyama forests. These wood-lands provide some trenchant lessons on the loss of biodiversity and our need to shoulder responsibility for ecosystems that we have remade for our own pur-poses. To learn how the Japanese have managed to steward sustainable, var-iegated woodlands over the centuries despite one of the world’s highest popu-lation densities — and how those same forests have been despoiled over the last few decades of postwar economic growth — we spoke with Fukamachi Katsue, a forest expert and associate professor at

Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies.

According to Fukamachi, what we call satoyama forests refers to managed woodlands of broadleaf trees and pines and other evergreens, including some monoculture plantation forests, located near rural settlements. Surprisingly, although the Japanese have been paddy farmers for thousands of years and have long relied on forest products, they’ve only practiced the systematic cultivation of forests since the Edo period (1603-1868), as Fukamachi explained.

Japan has experienced acute defores-tation. In previous centuries, villagers’ needs for timber (including firewood)

and the insatiable demand for it from ruling daimyo feudal lords and early sho-guns, and also from temples and shrines — all of them engaged in colossal wooden construction — fueled whole-sale denuding of wooded mountainsides near populous areas. This peaked dur-ing a period the historian Conrad Tot-man described as the “Early Modern Predation” of 1570-1670. To regener-ate the forests, the Edo shogunate first tried instituting strict limits on logging, without much success; later, shogunate officials began instructing farmers on seedling culture and other types of for-estry. Accordingly, farmers made the most of what little land they were able to

By JanE sinGEr

s also see “Kyoto’s forests”: kyotojournal.org/biodiversity/kyoto_forests.htm

T h e W o r l d s o f s a T o y a m a : f o r e s T s

photogrAphs by John einArsen


C.W. niCol

I Was BorN IN souTh Wales, where much of nature had been destroyed by the results of the industrial revolution, the coal industry and things that tagged along with it. When i was a boy, only five percent of Wales was covered with forest. i went overseas and, at the age of twenty-seven i became the first Game Warden of the simien mountains national Park in Ethiopia. i loved my job in this truly lovely part of the world, but was driven to despair over corruption, forest destruction, erosion and loss of water. now, having reached the age of seventy, i dare say that i am a happy man, not yet contented, but with a living dream to follow, a rainbow to chase. When i came to Japan for the first time in 1962 to study martial arts, i became enchanted with Japan’s natural forests, well-tended woodlands and pure rushing streams. having come back to the country many times, i finally settled down in Ku-rohime, in northern nagano prefecture in 1980. it wasn’t long before i became over-come with dismay at the rapid destruction of old-growth forests, and the neglect of previously productive mixed woodland and single species plantations of conifers. We have pretty well perfect freedom of speech here in Japan, so i made my views known, and was vociferously critical of the Forestry agency, who were mainly responsible for much of the destruction and neglect.

Being a critic is one thing, but i wanted to do something. then, back in 1985, i saw firsthand the efforts in south Wales to bring back woodland and nature, and was especially inspired by the afan argoed For-est Park, where they had even re-forested old slag tips. that is why i began to buy badly neglected and abused woodland with the dream of bringing it back to diverse and productive life. together with an experienced forester that i hired, we began to trim out sick and spindly trees, clear tangled brush, and replant species that had been lost, trees such as beeches and horse chestnuts. We now have seventy species of native trees. in 2002 i established a trust and donated the land to it. now we own 30 hectares (74 acres), and are slowly increasing our area. our little trust and the afan argoed park in Wales have become the world’s first ‘twinned’ forests, with excellent rapport and communication. By november of this year we will move into a fine new centre — built on land adjoining the woodland, not cutting into the woodland to build! Chairs, desks and tables for the centre are being made from hardwood harvested from our woodland — and we only took trees whose removal would enhance the growth and health of bigger and more vigorous neighbours. We continue to research and work, and i

am really happy with the diversity that has returned — we have bears, badgers, foxes, racoon dogs, civet cats, martens, weasels, flying squirrels, squirrels, hares, dormice, moles, voles and four kinds of mice, and in recent years, with decreasing snow cover, wild boar and deer. thirty-six species of dragonflies have made their homes in the ponds and waterways we dug, and in the streams from which we cleared debris and garbage. including plants (but not yet insects), we have identified twenty-six endangered species that have returned to the habitats we re-created. We harvest mushrooms, both wild ones and those grown on logs, together with firewood, forest thinnings for charcoal, aromatic oils, and wild mountain vegetables, and all of this without depleting any given species. to prevent trampling by our visitors and children’s programs we spread wood chips (made from trimmed-out trees and branches) on trails and gathering places. We have established ‘no-go’ areas and left patches of dense undergrowth and brush here and there, for those creatures that like to hide or nest in such places. We have a long way to go, but it’s a great journey. oh, and even the Prince of Wales spent a day to come and visit us! that made this old Welsh-Japanese (i am a citizen of Japan now) pretty happy! 5

BorN of despaIr, a BeauTIful foresTC.W. niCol

photogrAph s by hiroshi sugA And Kimio KAwAsAKi

myopIc foresT polIcy = ITchy eyes


wrest from the mountainsides by plant-ing, or by selective trimming of, forests intended for gathering firewood, char-coal-making and for long-term use close to fields and home.

“In northern Kyoto prefecture, for example, farmers would have differ-ent kinds of trees growing in differ-ent areas, with the longer-term growth and taller trees farther away from their homes,” Fukamachi explained. “Near the rice fields they cultivated and cop-piced small groves of trees like konara oak or azalea, useful for firewood or fer-tilizer.” (With coppicing you periodically cut trees close to the base of the trunk, allowing new shoots to grow for contin-ued harvesting.) “Farther up the slopes of nearby mountains farmers might have trees for fuel, to be cut every 20-40 years. On higher land, tall oaks or Japanese hornbeam trees would grow for 40-60 years before being used to make char-coal, while way up the steep mountain slopes, the ‘problem areas,’ tall beech trees or Japanese sugi and hinoki cedar would typically be conserved for gen-erations or until needed for rebuilding homes.”

Some of the stands grew densely, allowing little sunlight, while oth-ers were almost as sparse as savan-nahs, allowing a range of floor plants and woody species to flourish. “If some groves are cultivated for a short time, then coppiced, you get a more plenti-ful and varied composition of plant spe-cies,” Fukamachi said. Regular cutting would provide more space for grasses and shrubs and the birds and insects that feed on them, and stands of trees of differing ages would also attract vary-ing clientele.

This biodiverse equilibrium largely held up until Japan’s postwar economic growth fostered the suburban develop-ment of former forest land. This was accompanied by a migration of rural job-seekers to the cities. Gradually the remaining farmers have grown too old and too few to continue trimming branches, cutting undergrowth, and thinning the forests as they should. In some areas, slopes have since filled with spindly, overcrowded evergreens, which

have largely replaced sunshine-loving deciduous trees. Mixed-cover forested slope has given way to monoculture sugi and hinoki cedar plantations, which were later abandoned when domestic timber prices fell. In other regions, sway-ing throngs of invasive bamboo (for-merly dug up for their edible shoots or cut for poles and other daily uses) now crowd out other tree species. In central Honshu, irruptions of deer are ravag-ing forests, nibbling their way through stands of beech trees and decimat-ing the soil-retaining undergrowth. In many areas wild boar and monkeys have migrated downhill into neglected village woodlands, from which they invade veg-etable fields and raid watermelons just when they reach peak ripeness. Accord-

WhilE its national Bird may be the green pheasant and the cherry blossom its national tree, Japan’s national utterance would have to be “achoo!,” the sound of 20 million springtime hay fever sufferers sneezing uncontrollably into their gauze masks. Blame the main pollen producer here, the sugi, or Japanese cedar, for runny noses and sore, itchy eyes, but the major culprit is the Japanese government, which planted or subsidized the planting of some 4.5 million hectares of cedar trees over a two-decade period from the early 1950s to replenish the nation’s forests, which had been logged out for the Pacific War effort. in yet another illustration of the unintended environmental consequences of short-sighted economic growth-driven policy, the Forestry agency decided on fast-growing cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) to fill mounting demand for fuel and construction materials for the nation’s booming postwar economy. the trees all matured within a mere 20 or 30 years and then, like debutants all coming out at the same ball, in unison they began releasing huge clouds of pollen that today visibly snake across mountaintops and into the nation’s urban enclaves.

in cities like tokyo, where up to one-fourth of the population is estimated to suffer from hay fever, smog traps cedar pol-len in the lower atmosphere, exacerbating the misery.

the monoculture cedar forests that have now replaced much of Japan’s origi-nal mixed woodlands have damaged plant and animal biodiversity and ecological

health. shallow-rooted cedars are easily toppled by typhoon winds or landslides, and they hold less water than broad-leaf species so can’t soak up as much storm runoff.

Unfortunately, competition from cheap imported lumber provides Japanese hold-ers with little economic incentive to har-vest the cedar and thereby reduce pollen. rural depopulation has also left cedar plan-tations neglected and overcrowded. Cut-ting down trees and trimming branches would allow in more sunlight and improve the health of the remaining cedars, says naturalist C.W. nicol, yielding improved wildlife habitats and increased floor plant growth of mushrooms and berries.

Certainly, pharmaceutical companies are enjoying the allergy explosion, with Japanese spending an estimated 20 billion yen a year on masks, goggles, antihista-mines and insertable nasal filters, along with homeopathic allergy remedies rang-ing from herbal tea to yogurt supplements. But the costs to Japan that accrue in lost worker productivity and national health care are nothing to sneeze at.

although former Prime minister hatoya-ma’s Cabinet promised to prioritize forest revitalization through direct payments for thinning the trees, the cash-strapped Japanese government has yet to respond decisively, aside from harvesting some publicly owned cedars within pollen-waft-ing distance of urban areas. With the pollen volume continuing to grow each year, hay fever looks to get a lot worse before it gets better. 5

ingly, most cropland in mountain areas is now encircled by electric fences, add-ing a touch of menace to otherwise bucolic scenes.

With many rice fields now fallow, due to rural depopulation as well as the gov-ernment’s promotion of reduced rice cultivation, the slopes alongside the rice paddies have been neglected, endanger-ing woodland plants and animals that were common sights as recently as the 1960s, including the goshawk, Orien-tal stork, rhinoceros beetle and many kinds of butterflies. Many flowers that feature in classical Japanese poetry or paintings, including Chinese bellflow-ers and golden orchids, can also now be found on Japan’s Red List of endangered or extinct flora and fauna.

By JanE sinGEr

Extracting wood from Japanese satoyama forests is often difficult and expensive due to the mountainous ter-rain, and the government has allowed cheaper imports to dominate the domes-tic market. The resulting neglect of woodlands has made them more suscep-tible to erosion and landslides and to the spread of pine and oak disease. The offi-cial response to these problems, at least a few decades ago, was massive aerial spraying that did little to defeat the pine weevil but decimated beneficial insects and the wild bird population.

Still, when comparing Japan’s green prospects at home with denuded expanses of tropical rainforest abroad it’s easy to wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, if the land is abandoned, won’t it eventually revert to original growth forest, with the tree species that once reigned there returning to dom-inance? The equation is not so simple, answers Fukamachi. “People have used the satoyama forests for thousands of years and many species have adapted to routine human ‘disturbance,’ just as they do to fires and typhoons. Many decidu-ous trees and animals actually depend on these disturbances to live. Only a limited number of species can adapt to this new situation and it’s unlikely that a healthy stasis can be reached. It’s possible for the forest to recover, but I think it will take several hundreds, perhaps even thou-sands of years.”

Misguided development and rural abandonment have brought a drop in biodiversity, a waning of the forest’s ability to store water in dry periods or prevent disastrous flooding, and a con-comitant decrease in public benefit, she said.

“We also can’t forget the cultural ben-efits of satoyama forests,” she added, “providing materials for traditional local housing, festivals, and wild foods, as well as scenic, recreational and educational value. People need to find a balanced, mutually beneficial way to live with nature. We need to use local resources sustainably as we did in the past. Instead of imported wood we should use local resources and recycle our building mate-rials so they don’t become waste.”

“Locality and biodiversity are both important themes, since local resources help support plants and animals as well as humans’ food production and other activities. We need to respect both indig-enous nature and culture.” 8

oNE CLEAR AFTERNOON last October, somewhere between northern Kyushu’s

Mt. Kuju and neighboring Mt. Aso, I found myself looking out over one of modern Japan’s most uncommon land-scapes: an undulating silver sea of grass. That day the grass was studded with rare purple thistles and brilliant tiger lilies; in spring, one finds tiny yellow violets and periwinkle Japanese gentians. Over 600 kinds of plants and many animals, including harvest mice, foxes, butterflies, and rabbits, share these hills with black beef cows and an ever-dwindling num-ber of farmers. I was in Kyushu to meet a few of them.

Grasslands are not naturally abun-dant in wet, warm Japan, where most cleared land quickly reverts to forest. Yet because ancient farmers needed grass to feed their plow animals, enrich their fields and thatch their roofs, they transformed chunks of forest into grassy meadows by burning and continuous cutting. These areas are called semi-nat-ural grasslands because while they are neither plowed nor planted, they would not exist without active human man-agement. In 1915 grasslands and waste-lands covered over 3.5 million hectares in Japan; today changes in farming have reduced that figure by 90 percent.

Of the grasslands that do remain, 74 percent are now made up of a few imported grass species, like Kentucky fescue, species which have high nutri-tional value, can be cut multiple times each year, and stay green throughout the winter. Those factors make them an appealing choice for farmers struggling to maximize efficiency and profit. Unfor-

tunately, however, such planted mead-ows are less biodiverse while requiring spraying of agrochemicals and frequent replanting.

By contrast, the Kuju-Aso grass-lands are some of the largest and oldest remaining semi-natural grasslands still burned each spring by farmers. I met with Ueki Mitsuo, the representative of 25 agricultural cooperatives that collec-tively own and manage the grazing land to the south of Mt. Kuju. At 58, Ueki has short wiry hair, crooked teeth, and a smile that continuously creases his wide brown face. The following text is a trans-lated, abridged, and rearranged version of what he told me that crisp October morning.

“The fire is a living thing. It doesn’t

feel dangerous — it’s more like the land is asking us to burn it well. I really feel good after it’s all burned. Right after-wards the days start to warm up and the land turns green. The young grass grows up and the cows eat that. They don’t like the tough old stuff.


Aflame & AliveManaged Grasslands in Japan

“out to pAsture” (mt. Aso grAsslAnds, Kyushu), pAinting by briAn williAms; photogrAphs by winiFred bird

By WiniFrEd Bird

T h e W o r l d s o f s a T o y a m a : G r a s s l a N d s

“We burn to readjust the environ-ment. If you just leave the land alone, all sorts of strange trees and brush — things the cows can’t eat — start to grow and get bigger and bigger. In five or six years there’s nothing you can do. The burning kills pests too, like ticks.

“I was born here in Kuju, in a farm family. The fifth of six kids, the third son. My older brothers left, so I was the one to take over the farm. I went to school at Tokai University, studied engi-neering, but I came back to farm. It was some sort of fate. Totally lucky. My dad grew all sorts of stuff — rice, vegetables, shiitake mushrooms, but I realized this area was ideal for beef cows. This is the age of specialization. I have about 125 cows, 80 percent of them free range, the breeding females.

“Free range makes the cows the hap-piest. They really take it easy. Usu-ally in Japan they’re kept in barns. It’s dirty, with manure and ammonia. Out here they can eat what they want when they want, follow their own rhythm. The cows really save me. I’m honored to spend my life with them. Nowadays everyone is motivated by money, not by what’s good for the cows. It’s strange.

See those green spots? That’s man-made pasture, from imported seeds. Peo-ple spend a lot of money, buying fertilizer, plowing the land, changing it to the sort of pasture they can cut a couple times a year. People thought the man-made pas-tures would be easier, and if they planted them they could keep more cows, but it’s not true. You’ve got to replant them every ten years. Also you’ve got to har-

vest grass during the rainy season, and that tends to fail because you can’t dry it right. In the old days it was all semi-natu-ral meadow. I think we should have stuck with that. Now we burn maybe a fifth or less of what we used to.

“The season for burning is around early March, after the grass has dried out over winter. In the fall we cut the fire breaks so we can burn it safely in the spring. In the old days the women would

ride out on horse carts in fall and cut the grass with big scythes, take it back for feed. On the day of the burn we get together around 8:30 and finish around 3:00 or 4:00. I was in middle school the first time I went out. I just followed along carrying buckets of water. Now I’m the fire setter. That’s the most difficult role — every time is different. If the wind is blowing like it is today, you can’t set the fire from upwind, or it will jump. I set it — sa sa sa — and then it takes off, it all burns up gorgeously.

“These days people don’t really need the semi-natural meadows. People think they’re a pain to take care of, and the man-made pasture is more highly val-ued. The old folks were really something. They had a very strong sense of responsi-bility — they knew this work was abso-lutely necessary. Lots of things have changed, and that’s great. It’s just that burning the fields is really valuable. Even if we don’t use all the meadows, we’ve at least got to keep burning them.” p


We mIGhT easIly assume that Ja-pan’s forest-veiled mountain vistas have existed since primeval days, but at one time parts of central Japan more closely resembled those of another densely populated island landscape — the de-nuded peaks of haiti.

during the Edo period (1603-1868) the rural landscape was dotted with tall mounds of grass and bare mountains, frequently giving rise to mudslides and fires (60 percent of mountains near villages were said to have been artificial grass mounds). the prevalence of grass mounds stemmed from the fact that farmers used the vegetation from these areas to fertilize their rice paddies. this green manure cultivation method, called karishiki, required a collective expanse of grass that was ten times the total area of the rice paddies in a village. Farmers actually burned off parts of local forests to open up the land so grass could grow, utilizing the grass both for fertilizer and for fuel. the open burning of mountains is still performed in places like Kyoto and nara, although the grass is no longer used by farmers.

in the course of the relatively peace-ful 18th century, rulers seeking greater revenues promoted expansion of rice

paddies. Burgeoning traders and land developers helped these lords to develop previously uncultivated land. in turn, demand for grass increased, and conflicts arose between villages over mountain borders and excessive consumption or outright theft of grass. Production of this traditional fertilizer often resulted in the devastation of forest ecosystems, and continuing development started to make the practice of green manure untenable by the 19th century. along with the rise of capitalization, this served as a trigger to shift farmers away from cheap but la-bor-intensive grass fertilizer and towards human manure or dried fish instead, both of which could be purchased at the market. in fact, human manure soon became an object of speculative trade. later, reforestation and reclamation projects returned a thick coat of green to some of the degraded rural areas.

We may be tempted, in our enthu-siasm over traditional rural land use models, to gloss over this alternative environmental history of satoyama. yet it offers a powerful reminder that any land use system can become harmful when the limits of sustainable use are surpassed. 5

a tale of Bald mountains

satoyama’s othEr history

By sUGiyama masao


TERAKAWA TOWA, 88, shuf-fles into the room and lowers herself onto a rattan chair, urg-

ing her visitors to help themselves to tea and the foods she’s heaped high on plates — homemade mackerel sushi and emerald green rice dumplings fat with freshly plucked and mashed yomogi leaves, all prepared in honor of today’s five-village festival (goka matsuri). Soon Terakawa starts to reminisce, unsure, she says, when such a chance will pres-ent itself again. She is delighted to be asked to recount her early memories of harvesting the bounty of satoyama.

More than just coexisting over these many years, Terakawa and her environ-ment have physically shaped each other. Decades spent coaxing food from fields and paddies and cooking it in heavy earthenware kama have curled her fin-gers and bent her upper torso nearly parallel to the ground. Yet she speaks with affection of a life spent living off the land, in which the bent-back toil of planting rice shoots in knee-deep mud was followed by the communal exhil-aration of the matsuri, with its flow-ing foods and sake and loincloth-clad sweaty young men heaving about omiko-shi floats. Today, Terakawa laughs, her grandson, an office worker in Kyoto, will help to hoist an omikoshi while his wife, decked out in kimono, will be pre-sented to the village as one of the year’s new brides.

Terakawa first came here as a young bride herself, from a village just down the road from Moriyama, this settle-ment on the mountainous western shore of Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture. That was just before World War II. Today Moriyama is a “bedtown,” where new concrete subdivisions for commuting salarymen and their young families sit on land wrested from forest, adjacent to narrow, winding roads lined with sturdy

photogrAph by micAh gAmpel

photogrAphs Above by winiFred bird

s also see “Japan’s creeping Natural disaster”: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090823x1.html

T h e W o r l d s o f s a T o y a m a : I N c o N c l u s I o N


old wooden farmhouses and their frag-ile, elderly residents.

“We had no grocery stores in Mori-yama in the old days,” she says. “We made or gathered almost everything we used, everything we ate. We raised veg-etables, barley and rice too, of course, and we had our fruit trees and logs for growing mushrooms. We’d gather wood from the mountains for cooking and for the bath, and harvest eels, shellfish and trout from the rivers, wild butterbur and rapeseed from the fields. We’d col-lect grass to strew atop the young rice seedlings before they sprouted. Why, we even dug up and sold the rocks.” (Black Moriyama rocks are still prized by Kyoto gardeners for their strength and distinc-tive patterns and stripes).

“Some things, though, we’d leave alone for years, like the pine or sawtooth oak trees in the mountains, since they’d be used for rebuilding the house, along with a big old Japanese cypress tree we’d use for the central pillar.”

Today, however, as suburban devel-opment encroaches on forest habitats and depopulation leaves fields bereft of farmers who can care for them, Ter-akawa’s bent green thumb is failing her, through no fault of her own: “In recent years I’ve planted fields of potatoes, dai-kon, mountain potato, garlic and tur-nips — it didn’t matter what I grew — and soon groups of monkeys would come down from the mountains and gobble up every bit. What they didn’t eat, the deer and wild boars, even the bears, would get to — there’d be nothing left for us people. It got so I just couldn’t farm anymore.” The problem is com-mon throughout Japan: As managed woods and meadows that once served as a “buffer zone” between deeper forest and village become overgrown, wildlife is moving in. Yet Terakawa remains san-guine. “I still go out twice a day to light

candles before the jizo statues beside the road to thank the gods for this long life of mine,” she says.

THE GENERATION of rural inhab-itants that includes Terakawa Towa has experienced firsthand the repercussions of heedless development and migration to urban centers. And Japan’s episode is but one of numberless similar stories around the globe As we work to pre-serve and promote global biodiversity, humans will without question need to set aside wild spaces that we do not touch. Yet we will also need to turn our hands and machines to the shaping and use of much of the earth. To what degree can agriculture and resource extraction overlap with a richly biodiverse natural environment? We hope that our inves-tigation of Japan’s satoyama landscapes and lifeways in this issue of KJ has pro-vided some insights.

Valid doubts persist about whether satoyama has ever been fully realized in its ideal form, or whether a national government whose policies helped to destroy the traditional rural environ-ment has any right to turn round and trumpet that network of integrated eco-systems as a model for the world. But becoming snagged in such debates will distract us from the many tangible and inspiring successes attained by these land-use practices themselves.

Instead, we should ask ourselves whether satoyama remains relevant today. At the most basic level, the parameters of sustainable use are set by what biologist/educator Wes Jack-son calls the proper ratio of “eyes to acres.” Overpopulation begets pressure to scrape the land dry just to meet our own needs. Shifting trends in lifestyles and mounting demands from the mar-ket insert our newfound desires into

that equation. Rural depopulation, on the other hand, drains away the very people who know the land in an inti-mate, nuanced way and can care for it properly.

The experience of Moriyama, how-ever, also suggests that urban encroach-ment into rural domains need not spell the end of enlightened land steward-ship — or biodiversity. In fact, Mori-yama’s festival continues due mainly to burgeoning involvement by the young office workers, insurance salesmen and university professors who have settled here precisely to enjoy such rural diver-sions. By making weekend farmers of these ex-urbanites and sponsoring rural-urban exchanges, hundreds of Japanese NGOs and rural municipalities are now spearheading a nascent rural revitaliza-tion movement.

In these pages, we have not sought to offer a template to superimpose onto a range of landscapes and cultures. Rather, we view satoyama as an illumi-nating concept and collection of wis-dom to learn from as we search for a better way to live here on Earth.　It sug-gests that biodiversity and human sus-tenance can go hand in hand; that satoyama’s ideal of a nurturing mosaic of ecosystems in which humans and their environment are mutually enhanc-ing can continue to guide us as we turn from the short-sighted and destructive land-use practices of recent years. Let us pause, then, as we plan our land use, be it the digging of a garden or the con-struction of a road, and ask the question that satoyama has taught us: Is there a way to create and to conserve spaces, somewhere in between, for the foxes and red-crowned cranes, the dogtooth violets and fireflies, to inhabit this land alongside us? 8

By JanE sinGEr and WiniFrEd Bird

Room for us all

Satoyama: The Real and the Ideal

Documents

Transcript of Satoyama: The Real and the Ideal