里山・里地里山
Satoyama describes landscapes shaped by long use around settlements: gathering fuel, farming, cutting grass and managing water. The word can refer narrowly to secondary woodland. The broader satochi-satoyama concept includes fields, grasslands, ponds, channels and settlements as well. Their forms change with local environments and the ways people work and live.
The term can extend from village woodland to a wider landscape of several connected environments.
Repeated cutting, mowing and water use helped maintain particular habitats.
Postwar changes in resource use led to new questions about land, labor and continuing care.
Japan’s Environment Ministry describes settlements and surrounding secondary woods interspersed with farmland, irrigation ponds and grassland. Fields can border woods, while ponds and channels support rice cultivation. The important relationship is how these parts are used within an area; the subject is broader than a single wooded hill.
The ministry’s earlier survey distinguishes colder-region oak woods, red-pine woods on drier sites and evergreen broadleaf coppices in warmer southern areas, among other types. Their histories of use and responses when management stops differ. One familiar mixed woodland cannot stand for every satoyama region.
Ponds and channels around rice paddies supply irrigation and provide habitat for frogs, dragonflies and aquatic plants. The ministry’s 2004 booklet considers pond margins, neighboring woodland and aquatic conditions together. Paddies, banks and adjacent woods can be connected parts of the habitat landscape.
A Nagano research review describes several resource connections. Wood and leaves supplied fuel; cut grass fed cattle and horses; manure and cut green material fertilized fields; thatching grass covered roofs. Gathering, carrying and using these materials linked separate pieces of land with domestic and agricultural work.
The ministry’s woodland diagram shows a cycle in which cut stumps produce shoots, the stems grow and wood is harvested again. This is coppice regeneration, using trees capable of regrowth from their stumps. The period varies with species and use; the diagram’s years describe a management example.
Repeated cutting kept some fuel woods relatively open and bright. When that use stopped, taller canopies, evergreen understory trees or bamboo grasses could change the light, reducing plants adapted to brighter conditions. Conservation therefore involves identifying the woodland and habitat conditions being maintained.
The review describes communal-use woods with limits on gathering seasons and amounts. Water organizations coordinated channel cleaning, distribution order and access times. Reroofing, planting rice and harvesting could also involve exchanges of labor between neighbors. Resources and the arrangements for working with them developed together.
The Forestry Agency traces heavy wartime and reconstruction logging, followed by reforestation. From the 1950s, growing construction demand encouraged some former fuel woods to become conifer plantations, including sugi. This was one route through changing land use; reduced fuel demand did not leave every former woodland unused.
Oil and gas replaced much firewood and charcoal use, while chemical fertilizers reduced the need to gather materials from woods and grasslands for fields. Fuelwood demand fell sharply from the later 1950s into the 1970s. Material flows that had sustained regular work across the landscape weakened.
Housing or industrial development near cities can directly replace earlier land uses. Elsewhere, changing population and labor reduce cultivation, mowing or woodland management. Unmown grassland may become scrub, while woodland floors grow darker. Loss of area and changes in habitat conditions are distinct processes.
Bamboo was maintained for uses including shoots. Where use declined, some stands expanded into neighboring woodland, changing shade and vegetation structure. Kobe treats bamboo management as a distinct task and describes plans to turn cut bamboo into chips for uses such as paving. The issue concerns particular sites and vegetation.
The ministry discusses introduced aquatic organisms affecting existing ecosystems. Kobe also addresses impacts from introduced raccoons and wildlife such as Japanese deer on habitats, farming and daily life. These pressures have different causes and require attention beyond reviving an earlier fuelwood routine.
The 2004 booklet places securing land alongside securing people to manage it. It describes agreements, participation by residents and nonprofit groups, and environmental learning. A lasting effort involves people entitled to use the land, local residents and other participants working together over time.
Kobe describes mowing paddy banks, maintaining ponds and restoring abandoned terraces, alongside biological monitoring with universities and civic groups. It analyzes environmental DNA in water samples to investigate organisms and uses harvested wood for timber products or charcoal. Observation and resource use both enter its continuing management.
Japan’s 2002 National Biodiversity Strategy identified changes in satochi-satoyama among the country’s biodiversity crises. In fiscal 2004, the ministry began conservation and restoration model projects in four regions, involving local governments, nonprofit groups, residents and specialists. These were institutional responses of that period.
Japan’s Environment Ministry and the United Nations University jointly proposed the Satoyama Initiative, addressing production landscapes shaped through farming, forestry, fishing and related work. A Paris meeting adopted a declaration in January 2010; the IPSI partnership was established in Nagoya on 19 October that year. The initiative and its partnership developed through distinct stages and extend beyond Japan.
Woods, fields, grasslands, ponds, channels and settlements considered as connected environments.
Trees able to sprout from living stumps send up new shoots after cutting; the stems grow again, on a period suited to species and use.
Oil and gas displaced fuelwood, chemical fertilizers changed farming inputs, and population and labor patterns also changed.
Development can replace a land use, while reduced management can change habitat through scrub growth or darker woodland floors.
Mowing, pond care, terrace restoration, monitoring and uses of harvested wood within continuing management.