In the Pines

A friend in the village, I-san, has talked with me on a couple of occasions about creating a eco-friendly burial ground on Mt. Ontake. I'm intrigued by the idea, and so was happy to find the following blog entry recently. There is a growing literature concerning the negative environmental impacts of western burial practices (i.e., attempting to preserve a body with embalming fluid, coffin, concrete, etc.). See the Centre for Natural Burial website for more information. Ontake-san is a sacred mountain, and many worshipers expect that their spirits will return there after they die (stone monuments on the mountain are erected for this purpose). So, it seems like a logical step to move towards creating a green burial ground on the mountain. Anyway, seems no less obscene--in my mind anyway--than the ski resorts, tourist shops, and mountain huts that currently litter the mountain.

I found an article in the Mainichi Daily News that I thought was relevant to my last post about environmental management. (Find the article here ). The article discusses the vegetation growth that has occurred Yamanashi prefecture's Shosenkyo 　(昇仙峡), a valley that was designated as part of the Chichibu Tama Kai National Park in 1950. Since that time the valley has become known as "Japan's most beautiful". . .which is definintely argueable. Apparently, a hands-off management policy since the areas inception to the national park has allowed the valley's vegetation to grow to the point where it is obstructing some of the rock formations for which the valley has become famous. The tourists are starting to complain. So, logging concessions are currently being considered. Seems logical. However, in an age of illogic, we get statements such as the following, which came from the hairperson of the Shosenkyo Tourism Association, Takehiko Suzuki: "We would like to...

Otaki is literally being engulfed by the forest. Abandoned fields and plots of forest have quickly become overgrown and wildlife has moved in. The areas of thick forest are also unappealing to most villagers, giving them a sense of becoming enclosed. For these reasons, residents of Otaki participate in 環境整備作業 (environmental maintenance/management/improvement activities--something like that). Yesterday, I finally had a chance to participate in one of these projects: clearing weeds and trees from along the prefectural road that leads from Makio Dam to Otaki. There were only about 10 of us there that day, which isn't bad for a village of 1,000, where a third of the population is over 65 years of age. It was a hard day of work, but they let me use a chainsaw, so I had no complaints. I don't know what the organizers were thinking. Also, I think my chainsaw skills were being whispered about. Ah, I'm the egghead; not supposed to be too proficient with such tools. With such...

The other day I had the privilege of meeting with T-san, widely considered Otaki's top hunter, and one of the best in Nagano prefecture. The conversation was illuminating. T-san has a detailed and nuanced understanding of the movement of wildlife in Otaki, the Kiso region, and Japan as a whole. T-san spoke of what he thought was the loonacy of the National Forest Agency's heavy cutting in the Kiso Valley, and Otaki in particular. He considered it a waste that trees that had been nurtured some hundreds of years were felled with little thought. Now, he lamented, it's just bamboo grass (a hearty, fast growing grass that dominates much of the groundcover in Otaki). In the postwar period, employing this kind of clear-cutting, the Forest Agency advanced further and further into the mountains around Otaki. Coversion of older, mixed forests, to younger, plantation-style forests reduced the overall area of suitable wildlife habitat. With less and less habitat in the back fore...

"I fell down right in my field and just started crying." These were the words of a neighbor here in Otaki, describing the experience of finding that about 100 stalks of corn she planted had been carried raided by monkeys; the ears of sweet corn devoured. These words came to mind as I scoured over various reports this morning about monkeys causing trouble in oddly different places in Japan. Most of the reports were about a monkey that was discovered in Shibuya station in the heart of Tokyo. The Japan Times article . Mainichi Daily News article . Guardian U.K. video . Japan Probe blog . One report from the Mainichi Daily News (article here ), however, talked about Uozu, a municipality in Toyoma prefecture that has recently armed civil servants with shotguns to boost numbers for its "Harmful Wildlife Hunting Corps". In the report the mayor of the city is quoted as saying: "It's easy for staff to help out with the extermination even during weekday working ho...

(Hihata S. 1878. Kaisei Shinano no kuni saiken zenzu: zen. [Nagano] : Nishizawa Kitaro) In a continuation of municipal amalgamations that have been occurring since the Meiji Restoration (1868) , there is new talk of eliminating Japan's current 47 prefectures and creating about a dozen "regions". See Japan Times article here. Though the argument is made that creating large regions will allow for greater decentralization and local autonomy, one wonders why it is always the centers of political and economic power, rather than local communities, that push for such structural reforms. Through an examination of the post-war land reform from the perspective of the central government and its contradictory needs to promote economic growth while maintaining its constituency of small-scale farmers. Mary McDonald* has argued that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP 自民党) has preserved some of the principles of land reform while gradually reregulating agricultural land to allow for new c...

Walking yesterday evening I looked to the hillsides above the village. The fading light of the day lay on the tree tops at a low angle--not the sun of summer. The mountains had a crispness that is not present in the damp heat of July and early August. Each tree stood out clearly from it's neighbor, sharp shadows defined the spaces between. Clouds billowed into the sky like the tops of souffles cresting the ridgelines surrounding Otaki. As dark descended a layer of moisture blanketed the trees and plants, cooling the air. I pulled a jacket from my pack and zipped myself into it. A full moon rose and took it's place in southeastern corner of the sky. The landscape glowed silver and I spotted Mt. Ontake crouching shyly in the back of a canyon, a veil of clouds at it's crown. I felt drawn by the mountain. Soon I was in my car speeding up the eas tern slope past the large stone monuments that denote the returned spirits of the dead. I stopped in the middle of one of the s...

I apologize for the long absence; I've been graced by visits from guests lately, so have been spending time playing in the mountains and canyons. I came across an article in the UK Guardian about a village, called Kamikatsu , in Shikoku that is striving to become a "zero-waste community" through a strict recycling program. The story intrigued me for two reasons. First, I wonder about the idea of "zero-waste". Second, I see similarities between Kamikatsu and Otaki in the resistance that some residents have to activities that draw on newer environmentalist themes. http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/08/04/japan460.jpg I wonder about the term: "Zero-waste". What does this mean exactly? I applaud the efforts of the residents of Kamikatsu , but it's important to note that recycling, not reduction (in either consumption or packaging), is the primary focus. In other words, reducing waste to zero will not be the final re...

Late summer in Japan is a time of very unstable weather, as typhoons and other monsoonal storms move up from the south. These rapid changes in the weather seem particularly pronounced here in Otaki. Because the Kiso Region is located at the southern tip of the Japanese Alps the area gets the first smack of all the storms rolling in from both the Japan Sea and Pacific Ocean. An amazing thunderstorm passed through Otaki today. There had been fair weather in the morning; fair enough to get my laundry done. But clouds began gathering just after noon. It was a monsoonal storm, and it flowed in quickly across the mountains from the southwest. The sky was filled with electricity, and my body anticipated the strikes of lightening that soon began ripping through the sky. Thunder rolled out in thick blankets that rumbled down out of the clouds and across the mountains. I stood mesmerized watching the sky as it continued to flash and rumble; rain began to fall in torrents from the sky. I h...

I got back to Otaki yesterday evening after about 10 days in Kyoto. It feels great to be back in the mountains where the heat and humidity of the cities are things only talked about in expressions of pity for those sweating it out below. Otaki has transformed itself once again. The brilliant greens of early summer have settled into deeper, richer shades anticipating (despite the heat) the coming fall. I've heard from villagers that from the end of August the temperatures in Otaki begin to tumble and don't stop until spring comes again. My time in Kyoto was wonderful. A trip to the ocean with the in-laws. We drove to the Japan Sea, fighting a horrendous downpour that killed 4 in Kobe--the road was a muddy river in parts. The sea was muddy with runoff, but we ventured in anyway. The final two days brought sunshine and clearer waters. I was impressed by the beauty of the ocean. Most of Japan's coastal waters are shady as far as swimming goes, but the coast in Tango (t...