In the Pines

Last weekend I had a chance to visit Mukugawa ( 椋川 ) , a village located about an hour north of Kyoto in Shiga prefecture. I found the area where Mukugawa is located on the internet, and was taken there by a professor from Shiga University whom I had contacted. This professor has been doing fieldwork in Mukugawa since 2005, much of which has focused on reviving past techniques of farming, forestry, and daily life. He began visiting Mukugawa because he had read that the villagers practiced burning of local hillsides up until the 1960’s. This initial interest grew into explorations of a variety of activities including charcoal-making, silviculture, and ox-drawn plowing. It also led him to develop a friendship with a young forester who lives in the village with his wife and three children, and who has also taken an interest in reviving various lifestyle techniques. On December 16 th , the Sunday I was in Mukugawa, several men of the village spent the morning making shi...

I was going to begin by apologizing for not having posted in a while, but realized that there is no one on the other side of this computer screen waiting in anticipation for the next exciting installment of the Sardonic twenty-something Graduate Student . "Oh I love when he makes vague references to theoretical concepts. . .it's da bomb" (my years of isolation from the world 'out there' allow me to continue using 'da bomb' (and my academic superiority allows me to use both 'quotations' and (parentheses) within parentheses))--check out the double parentheses. . .woo woo. I have Japan news, but I'm going to start first with an album recommendation. . .well, half an album, because I've been meaning to write about it for a while now. Again, my existence inside the confines of a tiny office almost certainly ensures that most reading this already know of this album, but here goes. Raising Sand is the album's name, it's by Robert Plant...

A second opportunity to volunteer in a local forest here in Nagaokakyo has spurred thoughts of spirit in relation to the ways that humans connect to forests, mountains, and other landscapes. My wife accompanied me to this volunteer course that took place on Saturday, November 24th. The course was held this time in the neighboring municipality of Oyamazaki 大山崎. The morning was spent sitting at a community center listening to various officials (who may have outnumbered the volunteers) speak of forests, economics, and management plans. The language was predictable: talk of watershed management, inactive landholders, and large amounts of funding from a national beverage company with a beer and whiskey factory in Oyamazaki. The speakers maintained an air of authority as they spoke scientifically and bureaucratically about forest management. The volunteers were left to listen and shuffle through a small mountain of paper. By lunchtime all of us were itching to get outside--not so ...

This last weekend I was able to get out to see some parts of Kyoto I hadn't seen before. On the 17th I joined a volunteer course on forestry offered by Nagaokakyo City where I live. The course took place at a place called 西山 Nishiyama on land that belongs to a nearby temple (Youkokuji 楊谷寺）. In the morning we learned about thinning techniques, known as kanbatsu 間伐. This includes felling trees to create space for nearby trees to grow and to open the canopy so that more sunlight can come through. We did the cutting with little hand saws, which was quite tiring, but they don't let the rookies have chainsaws. I felled two trees myself, which was quite satisfying I must say. We cut the trees into sections about 3 meters long and laid them perpendicular to the hillside so that the forest could "take them back"--a glossy phrase that conceals the fact that there is no market for wood in Japan (hence volunteers are used to "manage" forests). The second half of the...

Not really too much to write about this evening. But, I have a couple of things to comment on. Yesterday I presented a summary of my research to the grad seminar that I have been attending here in Japan at Kyoto University. The presentation went alright (thanks to gracious editing by my wife), questions, however, were another matter. I struggled my way through answers, but find it very frustrating to not be able to express myself. From experience with others speaking English as a foreign language, I know that it's hard to judge someone's ideas through the vocabulary of a pre-school student--so I'm annoyed at having to be the "little kid". Anyway, it's over now. An interesting thing the other night. Two gentlemen came to my door, one was a neighbor and the other a construction company representative, to explain that they were going to be beginning a remodel on the house directly behind us. They passed me a schedule of the renovation that also explained p...

Last weekend I was able to make a trip to Nagano for an Autumn Festival in Otaki village, where I am planning to do fieldwork. I was really impressed by the beauty of the village. It's located in the southern part of Nagano in a valley known as Kiso. The Kiso valley itself has been famous for its forests for hundreds of years in Japan--the Tokugawa government controlled it strictly in the Edo Period (1600-1868)--and this continues today with the majority of Otaki village under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries as national forest. According to the village head, this situation doesn't bode well, either ecologically or socially, for the village itself. Part of the problem is that in 2005 most villages in Japan were amalgamated into larger, administratively simpler, municipalities. However, because of a ski hill that had been built some years earlier, Otaki's yearly revenue wasn't low enough to be considered for amalgamation by th...

I attended a symposium over the last two days held here in Kyoto by the Research Institute of Humanity and Nature entitled "Asian Green Belt: Its Past, Present, and the Future". The presenters varied in their disciplines from the keynote speaker Peter Bellwood, an archaeologist, to Yasunari Tetsuzo from the Hydrospheric Atmospheric Research Center at Nagoya University. Part of the goal of the symposium, it seemed to me, was to define "Asian Green Belt" (AGB) in some way. Definitions offered included climatic, geographical, cultural, and imagined. The symposium was dominated by ecologists and so I felt that there was a stark lack of critical analysis concerning the concept of AGB. There was a sense that AGB could be referred to as an eternal nature to which policies of renewal, conservation, and maintenance should be directed. The problem is that such an AGB concept takes no account of local diversity, both ecological and cultural. In response to this, I was most imp...

Congratulations to my little sister and her husband who found out recently that they are going to have a baby!!!! Youngest in the clan is setting the bar. Good job you two, wish you the best. My fieldwork is sort of non-existent at this point. I've contacted one village where I would like to do research, but haven't heard back from them yet. The village is called Otaki and it's located at the base of one of Japan's volcanoes, called Ontake. The village only has about 1,000 residents and about a third of them are over 65. I've been reading a report on their website from last year that details their plan to gain fiscal independence. It's really quite sad. At the national level there has been a move to amalgamate 3,500 municipalities that existed in 2004 to less than 1,000. At the same time there is a movement towards decentralization, which is partly a reflection of larger trends in Asia. The situation is bleak for villages like Otaki because they have v...

First off, this picture is from a "take-asobi" (lit. bamboo playing) event at a temple near my home here. Hundreds of cut bamboo are placed in a bamboo forest and lit with candles. Taiko drummers performed as well. A nice way to spend a fall evening. Several things to rant about today. I can start by apologizing for not posting more often. The reason is that we don't have a solid internet connection yet, so I've been pilfering off a neighboring wi-fi signal. Japan, despite being light years ahead of the U.S. in cell phone, TV, and toilet technology, is woefully behind when it comes to internet access. I guess I won't say woefully, but rather will point out that I am having to wait a month to get cable internet because they don't have the infrastructure . In part this is because Japanese haven't been suckered into paying for cable television like Americans have--whatever the reason, it's a bit annoying. I must say that I love my cell phone tho...

Yesterday I attended an "undoukai", literally exercise meet, at my nephew's preschool in Kyoto. For those who haven't experienced an undoukai, it's an event for school kids to show their parents what they have been learning, in terms of athletics, at school. For non-Japanese, or perhaps just for anthropologists, the whole scene can be quite surreal. An undoukai is full of pomp and circumstance, as most events in Japan are, that is fascinating in its ability to reinforce what has come to be called Japanese culture. I'm sure an "outsider" watching a similar event in America would be able to make similar observations. However, America has no analog for the undoukai, which makes it particularly interesting--but again, this may only be anthropological curiosity. The first thing I noticed at yesterday's undoukai were strings of flags of countries from around the world hung over the field where the event was taking place. I found this odd as the un...

The wife and I safely landed in Japan at about 4:20 pm local time on October 4th. How we made the flight and the ride from the airport with all of our luggage is a mystery to me, but somehow it all worked out--nothing broken either. The staff at the airport were wide-eyed when we walked up with all of our crap. A group of rich white folks on a tour of Japan were equally surprised as the MK Taxi employees piled our crap into the tiny van that was to take us to Kyoto--"let`s challenge", said the driver with a smile. I`ve titled this entry "kikoku", made up of the kanji for "return" and "country". Usually this word is reserved for nationals returning to their own home country, but I feel it is appropriate for me to use it for myself. Coming back to Japan is as much "returning home" to me now as returning to Utah is. The deserts of southern Utah and the mountains of central Japan are for me the lands of my birth--the places where I ha...

I read a Deseret News article today about the 150th anniversary of the Mountain Meadows Massacre (link below). It troubles me that the LDS leadership feels compelled to control this piece of land when descendants of the massacre victims are calling for federal control. Part of my uneasiness comes from the newspaper article itself, which states explicitly about three times that Brigham Young himself DID NOT order the massacre. As far as I understand, it's nearly impossible to make a factual statement one way or the other concerning Young's role in the massacre. However, it is a fact that his role in the massacre has been questioned by historians and others (hence the author's adamant denial?). Beyond their refusals to relinquish control of the Mountain Meadow land, the LDS leadership's unwillingness to investigate the massacre in any detail adds to my feelings of disturbance. When the current monument was built about a decade ago, bodies of some of the victims were ex...

The legendary Jazz drummer Max Roach died on August 16, 2007. His funeral was held in New York last Friday. Though I had long admired Roach for his quintessential role as an innovator in jazz, I was surprised to learn of his activism. He once descended on the UN, along with his then wife, Abbey Lincoln, and the poet Maya Angelou, to voice dissent over imperialism and the treatment of blacks in the U.S.--Harlem at the UN--pretty amazing stuff. During a Miles Davis concert at Carnegie Hall in 1961, Roach stopped playing and walked to the edge of the stage carrying a sign that read, “AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, FREEDOM NOW.” This exemplifies the breadth of Roach's activism. He wasn't only fighting against racism in America, he beat past all that to examine the true causes of inequality--digging deep to expose the legacies of colonialism and the dangers of fascism. What saddening beauty it is to watch these wise men, born into structures of disempowerment and bondage, rise up an...

Thought I'd take a few minutes between writing a letter to the town where I am hoping to do research and studying for comps to jot a few words. I heard an interesting little snippet of radio today. It was a female talk radio host--conservative woman, not sure of her name--and she was talking about Brad Pitt. Apparently he and Angelina are now living (at least part of the time) in New Orleans. My first inclination was to make some snide remark about THAT, but when one realizes that Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears are also out there, I suppose you have to give a little props. However, Brangelina's charity work is not what I am getting at here. This woman on the radio was expressing her astonishment at Brad Pitt stating that Katrina was not a natural disaster, it was a human-made disaster. The radio host's reaction reminded me of a comic I had seen post-Katrina that depicted Bush nailing a wanted poster of "Mother Nature" to a tree. The message seems to be: American...

Part of my research is focused on historical changes in forest landscapes in Japan. Historical ecology as an approach emerged from critiques of the neo-functionalism of Rappaport, who I wrote about previously. The neo-functionalist approach focused on ecological and human systems as functional entities that took on a timeless quality. The idea was to understand how a system maintains balance, so little attention was paid to processes of change (history). Thinking in terms of ‘non-history’ stemmed from the old dichotomy of nature/culture, which I’ve focused on a lot. In these terms culture is historical, changing—humans create culture and it progresses through time. Due to their very ‘primitiveness’ tribal groups were conceived of as existing outside of culture. Obviously things were not so simple as this, but it’s important to understand how anthropologists (and others) were struggling to think about historical versus natural processes. It was Eric Wolf and his book Europe and the Peop...

Studying for comps is coming along. My office here at the university is freezing though. Who knew I'd need all of my sweaters here in Hawaii. I start my exams in a little over a month, which is absolutely frightening. I really don't feel prepared and still have a lot of reading to get done. But, I'm trying to start formulating thoughts, which is what I'm doing here I suppose. So, though none of this may be particularly interesting, it's helping me. After this entry I'm going to get away from the narration of the itellectual lineage of environmental anthropology and talk some more about current questions and how they relate to my own research. I'm particularly interested in political and historical dimensions of environmental research in anthropology so I will be talking about that. But, that will have to be next time. For now, here's the last posting conerning the history of environmental anthropology. ...

A couple of things today. I recently watched a film called "Why We Fight" that I would highly recommend. Thinking again about my comments in my last post concerning the open spaces of democracy, I find myself wondering more and more about the power citizens have to do this. The hope in all the darkness I think is that systems seem to require this stage of control and rigidity in order to find ways to novel forms and processes. A fear that remains with me is the effects of the collapse that is sure to follow the tightening of our current system. Will it be fast? Slow? Painful? I think keeping open the spaces were democracy can thrive is vital, because it is in these same spaces where we find compassion, understanding, and new ways of thinking. The hope is that the new combinations that arise from systemic collapse will lead to brighter futures. So, that's a little gloomy, but also a little hopeful. Ed Abbey said it well: "Down with Empire! Up with SPRING!" Secon...

So, I guess I said I was going to write about Julian Steward today. Steward was born back east and his father was a bureaucrat of some sort. His mother was a Christian Scientist, which appears to have turned Steward off to religion for life. As a teenager he attended a boys school in a small valley at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains in small basin near Owens Valley, California. I'm forgetting the name of the school now, but basically it was a place where the boys lived, worked, and were educated. Steward appears to have fallen in love with the place, and the austerity of his surroundings had a big impact on his approach to anthropology. Steward's father had passed away at some point and so caring for his mother fell to he and his sister. This was often a burden for Steward as he struggled to pay for graduate studies (and I thought that was only a contemporary problem). Anthropology was still young at this point, with nearly all departments having been started with...