Satoyama: Japan's Secret Water Garden (1999)

A landscape of terraced rice fields, with small streams, coppice woods, and scattered homes. These places of everyday life, shaped by people over many long years, are called “satoyama.” Including the photography of ImamorI Mitsuhiko, a photographer who has continued to capture images of “satoyama” along the shores of Lake Biwa in his home prefecture of Shiga, this program conducts fixed-point coverage of the seasonal changes of the nostalgic, traditional Japanese rural landscape known as “satoyama,” where people and nature coexist. “Satoyama” is not only a place for human life. In the rice paddies live many aquatic insects, such as giant water bugs, fireflies, and dragonflies, and large catfish swim upstream through the waterways to spawn. The coppice woods, where shiitake mushroom cultivation has been practiced since ancient times, are a treasure trove of rhinoceros beetles and stag beetles. The living creatures of “satoyama” remind us of the rich and strong bonds between people and nature. (Source: Japanese = bpcj.or.jp/program || Translation = kisskh) Edit Translation

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