Satoyama of Mitsuhiko Imamori
Shin-Ichi FUKUOKA　Biologist/Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University

What is satoyama? You may think it is a low hill in your neighborhood. It is not.

Satoyama is not a place but a state or people’s action.

Mitsuhiko Imamori, a photographer, used the word “satoyama” for the first time and introduced satoyama to us through his beautiful photographs and images of satoyama around Lake Biwa.

It is evident that he is a leading photographer since he received Ihei Kimura Award (equivalent to Akutagawa award in photography) when he was young as well as Ken Domon Award a little later. He still is a man of practice and engages in satoyama with atelier near Lake Biwa.

Observing his activities, we learn that satoyama represents a state of continuous change. It requires untiring action, or dynamic balance of life in my words, to maintain this state of moderate change.

It is nothing but a border or interface between “sato” (living sphere for people) and “yama” (biosphere or natural habitat for animals and plants). When people leave it untouched, satoyama will be at the mercy of nature and when people interfere too much, nature will be destroyed. Satoyama shows the dynamic state of the interface. It requires time and effort or action to maintain.

At the end of February, I made a visit to Imamori’s atelier at Ougi in Shiga prefecture. It was a cold day and spring was far away. On the hill behind his atelier, Quercus serrate and sawtooth oak trees naked of leaves stood dignified against the blue sky. I could feel subtle warmth in their graceful branches. They sent sign of spring. It was clear that they had accumulated energy for shooting buds.

I saw many insect-catching nets in his warehouse and piles of books and magazines on insects that cannot be accommodated in the main building. I felt happy to find my company since I was crazy about insects in my childhood. I asked him to wear his rubber boots and visited “Meisui-no-satoyama”, where he is engaged in his model project to protect nature.

It was a typical “yatsuda”. Yatsuda is a small valley extending from a mountain-side to a foot of a mountain used for terraced paddy field. It is the original landscape that could be found anywhere years ago. Since it is difficult to use machines to cultivate yatsuda, old farmers without young successors find it hard and inefficient to grow crops there. Yatsuda is thus abandoned one after another and destined to disappear.

On the other hand, nothing is as wonderful state as yatsuda when we think of satoyama as an interface where life intersects. It is because everything life needs is there. The very first component is water flow. There is an intact watershed in yatsuda. Climbing up along fan-shaped terraced paddy fields, we encounter a pond silently filled with water at the pivot of the fan. Looking carefully at the water surface, we see that fresh water continuously flows into the pond from the mountain, making transparent ripples. This is the headspring. Overflowing water runs through tortuous waterways, filling the paddy fields from top to bottom. Sunlight is shed on the water. Photosynthetic plant microorganisms grow there, which attract small zooplanktons and shellfish that use phytoplankton for feed. Zooplankton eating fireflies, other insects, small fish, shrimps and frogs come and live there. Then here come butterflies, birds and small animals. The cycle of life continues.

Imamori acquired the whole yatsuda there and have just started his project to regenerate satoyama to recover the cycle of life. Imamori enthusiastically talked about the future of the project and his eyes harbored the same fresh sparkles of enthusiasm as he had when he was a boy fascinated with insects.