SATOYA: Gift to Our Future Generations
Michiyo OKABE　Gallery A4  Deputy Center Director/Chief Curator

Mitsuhiko Imamori wrote an article titled “Story of Satoyama” in “Mother Natures” in 1992. The word “satoyama” attracted people’s attention. Mr. Imamori uses the term “satoyama” to indicate a “place where people live with nature” or “traditional agricultural environment where people and other living things co-exist”. It does not mean any specific place but all the space where people and non-human living creatures live together.

It was not many years ago when we found fields, paddy fields and mixed forests in our neighborhood. We were always surrounded by the seasonal natural landscapes, feeling creatures’ breaths. Now we find that roads along terraced rice fields were paved into straight concrete roads. Apartment houses have been constructed on the open field, which were our playgrounds, pushing plain away from our view. We no longer see children trying to catch insects with nets. During the last half a century, we have experienced enormous change in our life style. We may loose the culture of agriculture that constitute “satoyama”.

Fifty-five years have past since Rachel Carson, a biologist, exposed environmental issues in her book “Silent Spring” in 1962. And 10 years have passed since Al Gore, former-vice president of the United States of America, appealed important interrelationship between our daily life and environmental issues in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. Many knowledgeable people have been warning that we need to take a step forward to solve such issues as global warming and waste and garbage without delay. It is not enough to highlight terror of the issues. What we need to do is to communicate wonderful feature of our familiar landscapes and to highlight lives of powerfully living creatures and people through beautiful photos and images. Such activities will grab people’s mind and give them opportunities to understand importance of environment.

Imamori introduces us to the landscape of “village in the mountain“, “village of people” and “village along the lake” around Lake Biwa, his hometown. The landscape communicates the smell of earth from the rice fields absorbing air, the breaths of frogs and fish in the water and the sound of trees filling with wind and sapping nutrients from the earth.

He now starts a new project of his life: He acquires land near his atelier and lives as an “environmentally friendly farmer”. He cultivates the soil of land a farmer abandoned and regenerates it as agricultural land. His goal is not to harvest but to create the space where he can learn the natural environment through agriculture. The project begins with cutting bamboos down to expose the land to sunlight and wind. In the midst of this endless process of work, a 150-year-old wild cherry tree appeared in the bamboo forest. The cherry tree standing in the place commanding wonderful view is a seeding tree that tells farmers that spring has come. It is said that farmers started planting rice seedlings when the cherry blossoms bloomed. This is the wisdom of farmers. The cherry trees have come to life again thanks to Imamori and will inform surrounding “Satoyama” of spring arrival.

Universities in Kinki area join Imamori’s project of “environmentally friendly agriculture”. This is the project where younger generation experience and learn that all nature including people, living creatures, plants, soil and water, have capacity to revive and to nurture life.

“Satoyama” is an irreplaceable gift to the future generations when we think the origin of life and when we are requested to live in harmony with nature as sustainable global citizens. We, human beings, are also parts of “Satoyama” landscape.