In pre-modern Japan, mountains and rivers were not seen as the property of anyone but as land entrusted to them from the heavens and the earth to live together as a common property. However, mountain areas in the backcountry, which have been protected and worshiped, are now being threatened by mega solar and wind power development projects, mainly by foreign investors. These are the forests that have preserved steep terrain and the lives of non-humans for a long time. In 2023, we bought a 60-hectare forest that belonged to Daijingu Shrine in the southernmost peninsula of Boso, Chiba Prefecture, to protect this land from development. We do not own this land but consider it borrowed from future generations, and we are restoring the forest to protect and nurture the rich natural environment and preserve it as a commons for present and future generations.
Over the past 30 years of my experience designing and constructing traditional Japanese gardens, I have come to admire the wisdom that lies deep within ancient Japanese techniques, and I am committed to researching, practicing, and disseminating these techniques as solutions to contemporary problems. The fundamental issue of modern civil engineering methods is that they do not consider the flow of underground water and air and the lives of non-human beings below ground. Instead, they squeeze and stagnate it, damaging the soil where diverse non-human beings, including fungi and microorganisms, breathe and carry out their life activities. This causes rainwater to not permeate into the soil and flow over the ground surface during heavy rainfall, scouring the topsoil and amplifying landslides and other disasters, aggravated by climate change.
Ancient techniques in Japan use organic materials such as leaves, rocks and branches, designing the infrastructure possible to work with tree roots and mycelia, creating healthy underground and forests so they become disaster resistant. There is important wisdom in “civil engineering by the people,” in which local people appropriately tended to the land and have lived there for generations while maintaining the richness of the land and nurturing the environment without damaging it. This presentation provides an example of reviving the commons in Japan, which enabled the ancestors to live their lives with appreciation for Mother Earth and gain and pass down wisdom from generation to generation. We believe that we have a role in preserving the diversity of life in this land, nurturing it and handing it down to future generations.
