Anyone
familiar with the popular anime My
Neighbour Totoro (となりのトトロ, 1988) will recall the lush, idealised landscape
known in Japan as Satoyama (里山).
Cushioned between the foothills of the mountains and rice paddy fields,
Satoyama ecosystems are the result of centuries of local, small scale
agriculture and forestry. In recent
decades, the preservation of these landscapes have become central to efforts to
promote sustainable living both in Japan and internationally.
In August, the
JAGUAR
Project (Sustainable futures for cultural landscapes of JApan and Germany - biodiversity and ecosystem services as Unifying concepts for the management of
Agricultural Regions) of Justus-Liebig University (Gießen) in collaboration with
the Science Council of Japan (Subcommittee for Nature Conservation and Restoration),
Fukui Prefecture, DAAD (the German Academic Exchange Service),
the German Embassy in Japan, and DWIH Tokyo (Deutsches Wissenschafts-
und Innovationshaus Tokyo), sponsored a Satoyama Symposium and Workshop that
brought together researchers from Germany and Japan. This event included public lectures in
Japanese and English and a tour of the countryside of Fukui Prefecture where the
participating researchers could learn more about local efforts at maintaining
sustainable Satoyama landscapes.
I gave a
paper entitled “Ecocritical Views on Satoyama in Japanese Popular Culture”
where I introduced the discipline of ecocritism to the Japanese and German
scientists present (the concept is a relatively new one in Japanese cultural
studies, and little known by scientists), and discussed how nature is depicted
in Japanese popular culture from romanticism of the landscape to fears of
apocalypse. I concluded with a
discussion of Satoyama as a Japanese “Heimat” landscape focussing in particular
on My Neighbour Totoro and how the
popularity of the film has led to the preservation of Satoyama landscapes
through organisations such as the Totoro Forest
Foundation.
In my
capacity as media consultant for the JAGUAR Project, I have written this series
of short articles on the highlights of our tour of cultural landscapes in Fukui
Prefecture.
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