Searching for Satoyama

The Japanese wordsatoyama literally means “village mountain” and evokes an abundant landscape where people are active participants in thriving, resilient, and sustainable ecosystems. Journalist Hannah Kirshner begins at her own home in rural Japan and journeys around the archipelago to mountain villages and remote peninsulas where people have worked closely with the cycles of nature for centuries to sustain communities, at the same time protecting woods and waterways. Life in these places isn’t always easy, but the landscapes she paints are rich and complex. They include:

• diverse forests shaped by coppicing and foraging;
• living stone walls engineered in cooperation with the landscape;
• rice paddy wetlands that support insects, amphibians, and increasingly rare birds of prey;
• networks of gardens that are a haven for biodiversity.

This hopeful collection explores how communities are preserving, reinvigorating, and reimagining agriculture, forestry, and craft practices adapted to local resources. Throughout her travels, Kirshner asks the stewards of these communities and environments what satoyama means to them and reveals opportunities all around us to heal our relationship with the natural world.