Ancient Harmony: Sustainable Farming Practices in Japan and the Challenges of Modern Conservation

Japan's land stewardship between the natural & human worlds

The Japanese word ‘Satoyama’ describes a landscape that is distinctly between the ‘natural’ and the ‘human’ worlds— not wild forests but not where humans reside, either. These landscapes are the outgrowth of human influence for maximum productivity. Traditional, pre-industrial farming in Japan was adapted to the natural environment—topography, geology, hydrology, climate, and biota. In a recent piece, we had talked about the traditional land use systems in Norway, which would be defined as an ‘‘infield/outland landscape’ and in Japan, a similar concept was utilized known as the ‘Satoyama landscape.’ There are obvious similarities and differences in land use—the most significant difference being the lack of cattle and sheep in Japan. These land use systems can be traced back to early sedentary settlements 1500–2500 years ago in Japan and at least 10,000 years ago in Norway.¹

Originally, the term Satoyama—from sato = village and yama = upland—was used for forested, often hilly areas situated beside farm villages—this definition has been traced back to the eighteenth century. In addition, Satoumi (from sato = village and umi = sea) is a coastal area where people are dependent on sea fishing. Before the introduction of commercial fertilizers in the mid-twentieth century, gathering litter in the Satoyama woodlands was very important. Open grasslands in the uplands were laid out and harvested for compost litter and grass thatching. It has been calculated that a village with 100 acres of rice paddy fields needed over a thousand acres of Satoyama woodlands for litter gathering. Trees were coppiced to get more tree trunks for timber, fuel, and charcoal production. This meant a rotation time of about 15–20 years. Coppicing occurred even in distant mountainous areas, reflecting the large geographic area necessary to support the villages.

Even today, large areas of coppiced woodlands are seen, but in general, these are overgrown woodlands as large-scale coppicing ceased in the mid-twentieth century. Food products were gathered, such as shoots of bamboo, ferns and herbs, chestnuts, berries, mushrooms, and game meat. Animal husbandry has been quite different from Europe; the staple food for most people was vegetables and seafood. Cattle (oxen) were mainly used as draft animals, even horses to some extent. When Buddhism became a national religion in the seventh century, cattle meat was regarded as unchaste. In the year 676, the emperor prohibited the consumption of meat from cattle and horses which lasted until 1871.  However, archeological investigations in Kyoto and other places have shown that carcasses of cattle and horses were butchered for several purposes including meat consumption. 

Silkworms were produced in areas where mulberry trees (native to Japan) were growing, and silk production was carried out from the Late Yayoi period 2000 years ago to the modern era. In contrast to the land use in Norweigian outlands, the Satoyama woodlands were used for the cultivation of plants that didn’t require watering, at least close to the farms. Satoyama woodlands were half-open hill slopes near settlements, or more closed woodlands at higher elevations and more distant places.² Pasturing of cattle and sheep did not occur in these uplands, as it was often simply too far from most of the population centers, and unlike the Norweigians, it was unheard of to have multiple homes to extend the grazing seasons.

Coppicing in a Satoyama forest

Dry-field cultivation or horticultural farming combined with the gathering of wild plants, such as chestnuts, and the utilization of grazing occurred as early as the Jomon period, from about 5000 to 1000 BC, and was probably related to mobile settlements in hilly landscapes. Wet rice cultivation was introduced from the Korean peninsula about 1000 BC. Satoyama woodland gaps are not well recorded by pollen from the ground flora which means that clearings followed by successions have to be traced in the changes in tree composition. In a regional Japanese context, many pollen diagrams demonstrate a rise of pine pollen in the Late Holocene, often dated within the period 1000 BC to AD 1000 and interpreted as caused by clearings, timber cutting, etc.

Although many pollen diagrams are old and not dated with high precision, there seems to be a time transgression for deforestation and expansion of wet-rice cultivation, from 1000 BC to AD 500. Forest exploitation with partial deforestation has been documented from AD 600–850, early modern 1570–1670, and modern 1900–1959. The main causes were coal production, cutting of firewood, and exploiting timber for buildings. This deforestation affected forested uplands belonging to different kinds of owners—the state, private landowners, etc.—as well as woodlands situated to nearby farm villages.  This led to an awareness of forest protection already from the ninth century.

Over this time, a general system of agriculture has come to be known in the region, utilizing its mountainous, water-saturated landscape, and its utilization has morphed to meet the changes of the climate and through experiments of successes and failures to create sustainable agricultural systems. Throughout this process, practices like clearcutting and coppicing have provided the periodic disturbance of the ecosystem that has maintained the diversity of the landscape.

The flora and fauna that have inhabited this environment of cold-temperate grasslands and deciduous woodlands, including species that have survived since the last ice age, face extinction if the deciduous woods give way to evergreen species, or if the meadows turn to forest. The current wildlife inhabitants have survived in this environment precisely because these grasslands and deciduous woodlands have been maintained by periodic human disturbance. Moreover, this land-use mosaic has provided a diversity of wildlife habitats by permitting the establishment of vegetation in varying stages of succession.

The satoyama woodlands were traditionally managed by local communities for collecting green leaves and litter for manuring wetland rice fields, timber for construction, and non-timber forest products such as bamboo shoots and mushrooms for food, as well as for firewood gathering. Although the total size of satoyama per village was variable depending on the number of inhabitants and the area of rice fields, it was a general custom until the Edo era (1603–1867 CE) to maintain several acres of early successional forests per hectare of rice paddy cultivated, and a family of seven to eight persons typically needed 4 or so acres of satoyama woodlands, which is significantly less than what the Norwegians had required. Given the more hospitable environment, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

As we said, historically, the land has ebbed in and out of sustainable farming practices utilizing these landscapes. A large component of this stems from the reality that Japan’s landscape is rife with extreme events which require very unique tools to create sustainable human-integrated habitats. In short, there was an extensive history of trial and error as a means of surviving on the small mountainous landscape in a monsoon climate, with the added challenges of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, torrential rains, and typhoons. For Japan’s natural environment to thrive, the species must be tolerant of disturbance, human or otherwise, which allows humans to utilize their ability to create patchwork ecosystems that help their environment. The alternative is for humans to minimize the amount of disturbance in order to allow species to thrive and evolve in more considerate environments. 

For at least the past few thousand years, the indigenous people have been living by creating crop fields by burning woodlands, expanding paddy fields by managing water, utilizing the woods and grass for fertilizer, fuel, or construction materials, and fishing in the rivers and lakes. Evidence suggests that historically, fish was a smaller component than game as a primary protein, which suggests the landscape once held much higher amounts of game than once thought, and the people who lived right upon the coast were the primary folks who relied heavily on the sea for its food.

The biggest impact on the landscape stemmed from the heavy rains that quickly overflow the mountain streams as they head to sea. Unsurprisingly, flooding and damage are inevitable without careful planning and management. Therefore, water management was the most significant factor in creating sustainable landscapes and developing settlements. Water was managed first by using the forests on the top of the mountains, which slowed the water from there to the terraced paddies designed utilizing swale systems, from there to the villages and the vegetable gardens, and ultimately back into the streams. While a high degree of maintenance was required to maintain these terraces through the use of dykes and retainer walls, these systems not only helped create sustainable living conditions for the small towns but helped reduce the ability of nature to create those extreme conditions, allowing for an extensive array of diversity.

However, this is an extremely simplified vision of what these landscapes looked like, and often these landscapes were managed by many communities collectively maintaining the health of their ecosystem. The term that’s more appropriate as we have this conversation is the term Satoyama Landscape, which incorporates all of these different functions within the entire landscape, while satoyama is focused primarily on the upland woodlands. The farmlands— satonora, and settlements, satomura— are all considered different from the satoyama itself. Generally, the satoyama landscape includes the lands, settlements, and reservoirs, because these elements have been traditionally so strongly connected through the agricultural land use system. Mountains often don’t just lead directly downhill, but often have peaks and valleys in which extensive flatlands or even smaller hills erupt, allowing for a complex, unique landscape for ecology and agriculture to thrive.

Ultimately, this mosaic of sustainably maintained environments is a result of generations of people managing nature to support their livelihood as well as supporting the landscape itself. These mosaics can support species that require multiple habitats for survival, enabling species diversity by providing these various habitats, which leads to the high diversity of species in the satoyama landscape, all of which is dependent on the natural conditions that exist in these regions.

Archaeologists have dedicated extensive research into learning the day-to-day lives of these indigenous lifestyles to learn more about the sustainability and the utilization of the environment. Their houses at the foot of the mountains were no different than most farm regions, with thatched roof grasses and local wood as the primary timber. The small settlements in the mountainous lands that were primarily forests had a population density of around 138 people per square mile, while the flatlands were closer to 1,000 people per square mile. For context, Atlanta has a population density around 3100 per square mile. Considering the resources available, the 1,000 people per square mile is significantly more dense than what we would imagine an agrarian society to look like. This landscape of satoyama once covered over 70% of the public natural forest and woodland area of modern Japan. Part of the reason that there were failures of this system in the past 4,000 years may be due to exceeding the carrying capacity of the landscape.

In many eras that have successfully managed the sustainable use of the land’s resources, the use of satoyama landscapes as common land had been established. The Edo period is generally recognized as the moment when agriculture took its most prominent role in Japan, and during this time local autonomy allowed the use of land as commons. This came with trials and errors, but ultimately led to an intensive type of management which ensured sustainable resource management. Much like the Norwegian farming communities, these communities relied on consensus and direct democracy for landscape management, and the towns along the mountainside relied on one another to ensure the complete landscape was maintained appropriately, creating a unique patchwork of small communities working together to maintain an extremely diverse landscape.

The sustainability of this collection of systems further relied on specific species that provided multiple uses for the people. One plant that has stood out from the others in its use is Japanese silver grass, a clumping, thick grass that grows up to 7 feet tall. This grass was used for fuel, roof thatching, and feeding livestock.  The grass can live alongside the flat paddy fields and can grow underneath the coppiced landscape, and was a key component of the feed their livestock ate. The primary livestock on the landscape were horses and cattle, but many wild boar and deer covered the landscape and thrived in the park-like coppiced forestlands.

Miscanthus sinensis (Japanese Silver Grass)

Another species that was a key component of the Satoyama landscape was the Japanese red pine. Evidence points to the Japanese red pine becoming a key plant for firewood starting in the 10th century, and by the 17th century, it had mostly disappeared as a key species in the landscape, as it does not coppice well and was quickly replaced by laurels who took over the habitat. 

Within the pine woodlands, a secondary, coppicable understory species provided supplemental heat and medicines, and that was the Azalea. It is said the mountains would all turn red in the summer as the flowers bloomed across the landscape. However, these were wiped away as firewood demand outpaced the reproductive capacity of the landscape, and the laurels that replaced the Japanese red pines outcompeted the azaleas.

Kyushu wild azaleas in Japan

The rice terraces, the iconic image of pastoral Japan, are estimated to be almost 2,500 years old. These terraces usually sit at the bottom portion of the slopes of these mountains, where they are accessible for the required maintenance but still a part of the mountains where they can harvest the water running beneath the soil. Whether or not it was planned, if you were to look at where in the mountainside the paddies began, it typically is around the key point we had discussed in the keyline design piece, which would explain how they were able to so effectively collect water into the paddy terraces. Paddy fields began around this same time, and evidence exists of paddies being destroyed and then built one upon another. At this time, evidence points to flooding, bringing volcanic ash soil, which holds nutrients well, down into the paddy region. Mixing this ash with organic matter creates the ideal conditions for permanent rice cultivation. The volcanic activity, paired with the erosion of mountainous landscapes and the sediment drop at the base of rivers together create the ideal conditions for permanent rice paddies and extremely fertile soils.

Flatlands in the small, shallow valleys on the downslopes of the mountains, known as yatsu, were often flooded for retention ponds and rice paddies as the swales were flooded and drained during rice production, and bamboo crowded the edge of the ponds, which was utilized for dozens of things and grows in thick clumps along water edges.³ Often, the settlements surrounded these areas in particular, and they dotted the entire mountainous landscape because of the fact such a large portion of the caloric intake of the communities came from these managed wetlands. These regions have proven to host a seemingly endless supply of rare insects and dragonflies that rely on the repeated flooding and drainage of the landscape, and without human intervention, the species have had extensive declines in populations.

A modern yatsu

I do want to talk a bit about something that became evident in the Satoyama landscape; an influx in mutualist relationships was documented particularly around the relationship between pollinators and flowers— specifically the native bumblebees and a whole host of flowers which time their blooms to be successive specifically for the bumblebees to maximize their utility in pollinating. The bumblebee’s flowers exist primarily within the satoyama landscape edges, which were maximized through the repeated coppicing of the trees, constantly opening up new areas to the flowers. The mutualistic relationship reflects the environment’s march towards better efficiency and in some ways, we could consider it an indicator that the landscape is becoming more resilient by the involvement in human intervention. Bumblebees are not the only species to have this type of unique mutualistic relationship, but the one I wanted to highlight as the correlation with the specific impacts on the environment from human intervention highlights the explicit ability of humanity to improve the landscape for the ecology. 

Further, many species specifically require the unique conditions of the terrace paddies to survive. For example, 8 species of frogs can only be found in the yatsudas, the landscape where these specific terrace paddies exist.⁴ The management of these traditional rice paddies, compared to many of the modern paddies, is that the yatsudas contain water year-round, and are fed from underground spring water, as we explained earlier, meaning the water is generally warmer than the melting ice on the mountaintops that flows into the rivers. Further, as to be expected, these terraced paddies are much smaller than modern paddies and the paddies on the lowland plains, created a microclimate that has evolved to create specific species for the unique conditions. The small microclimates were paired near one another in the terraced structure, allowing for the frogs to go from paddy to paddy with limited effort, and these species don’t have the capacity to travel long distances.

Abandoned small-scale farming of plains and valleys together with afforestation and urban expansion has led to a serious deterioration during the last 60 years. This abandonment stems from access to cheap fertilizers, scaling to compete in global marketplaces, and aging populations while younger people moved toward the cities. Another factor in the loss of the satoyama landscape is the breakdown of the functional relationships among the elements of the land-use mosaic. The satoyama landscape once provided a system for the cyclical use of bioresources: villages and cities used the firewood and charcoal from the coppices; compost, as well as waste from the villages and cities, was applied to the fields and paddies; and vegetation provided fodder for livestock. Because of the circulation of bioresources described here, the satoyama landscape thus serves as a model not only for a nature-harmonious society but for a resource-circulating society as well.

Today, however, this process of circulation, too, has collapsed with the advent of an economic system that seeks to improve productivity through greater efficiency in the form of monocultural land use and threatens to eliminate the small acreage land-use pattern of the satoyama landscape. Abandonment of this land use during the last half-century has led to forest succession and afforestation followed by decreased diversity. Some species of plants and animals are threatened today. One study within the Tokyo metropolitan area, based on a map sequence for the period 1880–2001, clearly shows that a mosaic Satoyama landscape existed with dominant woodlands until 1961 but was then almost totally replaced by urban land use.⁵

Over the last 30 years, there has been a growing concern about the deterioration of Satoyama due to, firstly, destruction by human activities such as urban development and secondly, under-management by an aging and decreasing population in the local communities of the Satoyama areas. People in Japan have a strong interest in the restoration of the Satoyama landscape because of its nature as well as cultural values, using the modern terminology ‘‘ecosystem services.’’ There is a growing interest in preserving and managing Satoyama landscapes as nature reserves or recreational areas, particularly close to cities and villages.  Citizens have organized associations for voluntary woodland restoration by clearing and coppicing woods, making joint excursions, etc.⁶ People are also invited to rent small field lots for cultivating rice, vegetables, etc. Some nature areas have designed walk paths with instructive posters for school children and other interested parties. 

A national movement named Mura-Okoshi, Village Reactivation, is growing intending to integrate rural areas with cities. Ecologists and environmental engineers have also emphasized the value of forest products when coppiced woodlands are restored. In Japan, much attention has been drawn to the traditional Satoyama rural landscape because of its destruction and deterioration due to societal changes since the end of World War II. Over the past 2 decades, there has been an assessment of the current state of knowledge—a critical evaluation of information on the interaction between humans and Satoyama-Satoumi landscapes in Japan. More than 200 authors, stakeholders, and reviewers from Japan and abroad were involved. It aims to provide scientifically credible and policy-relevant information on the significance of ecosystem services provided by Satoyama and Satoumi landscapes and their contribution to economic and human development for the use of policymakers.⁷ The Satoyama and Satoumi landscapes are considered dynamic mosaics of managed socio-ecological systems producing a bundle of ecosystem services for human well-being.   The study also identifies plausible alternative futures for those landscapes in the year 2050, taking into account various drivers such as governmental and economic policies, climate change, technology, and socio-behavioral responses. 

Satoyama restoration.

What’s particularly interesting about this revitalization is that researchers have begun to recognize the need for humanity to be a part of the landscape, but fail to see how our current economic model explicitly makes this nearly impossible. Utilization of bureaucracy and general funds as well as well-meaning but underskilled volunteers is a mixture for long-term disaster and takes not only the ownership of these systems, but the reason for these systems out of the hands of the communities themselves and into a pseudo-mix of white-collar professionals and the citizens who have the time to volunteer in these types of feel-good projects, which is problematic in the way our sense of place within nature is becoming the exclusive playground of the upper and upper-middle classes.

We can look at why these solutions aren’t solutions simply by looking at, for example, those unique from species around the terraced paddies- the yatsudas. While modern researchers have identified these sites as having ecological value, their solutions are framed from a modern context. While part of the reason these sites have deteriorated is from abandonment, another component is the role of urban spaces and how the water flows throughout the landscape. These cities have drained many of the natural aquifers that filled the paddies, leaving the yatsudas dry. Further, before the unique value of these sites was recognized, farmers had tried to improve these conditions through better drainage and newer dykes. Again, modern paddies often don’t hold water year-round, so that was explicitly done through the utilization of concrete over bare earth and straightened ducts to increase yield and efficiency.  Irrigation was brought in to manage water from a mechanical perspective instead of meeting the needs of the ebbs and flows of the seasons and the water resources within the land.  Landscapes were changed to bring in equipment and to increase paddy size to raise efficiency. Bringing these landscapes back to their natural state is all but impossible, and we are looking to our technology to solve the problems caused by our technology, causing unintended consequences as simple as providing cooler water than traditionally experienced in these regions and resizing the yatsuda, creating new challenges for many species. After studies, the landscapes that were fed with natural spring water provided the best landscapes for these frog species.

The challenges in restoring the landscape here point to the fact that these solutions cannot come from the goal of simply preserving the landscape, but creating a relationship with the landscape. Japan’s Satoyama landscape has evolved and points to the fact that it’s a continuous evolution of our relationship with the landscape which will guide us to better efficiency with said landscape and that what may have once been a healthy, sustainable human-centered ecology may not always be. We are allowed to fail and learn to be better stewards, but that means we need to meaningfully try. 

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1. Berglund, B. E., Kitagawa, J., Lagerås, P., Nakamura, K., Sasaki, N., & Yasuda, Y. (2014a). Traditional farming landscapes for sustainable living in Scandinavia and Japan: Global revival through the satoyama initiative. AMBIO, 43(5), 559–578. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0499-6

2. Takeuchi, K. (2003). Satoyama the traditional rural landscape of Japan. Springer Japan.

3. Kumar, B. M., & Takeuchi, K. (2009a). Agroforestry in the Western Ghats of peninsular India and the Satoyama Landscapes of japan: A comparison of two sustainable land use systems. Sustainability Science, 4(2), 215–232. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-009-0086-0

4. Indrawan, M., Yabe, M., Nomura, H., & Harrison, R. (2014). Deconstructing satoyama – the socio-ecological landscape in Japan. Ecological Engineering, 64, 77–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2013.12.038

5. Fukamachi, K., Miki, Y., Oku, H., & Miyoshi, I. (2011). The biocultural link: Isolated trees and hedges in Satoyama landscapes indicate a strong connection between biodiversity and local cultural features. Landscape and Ecological Engineering, 7(2), 195–206. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-011-0164-1

6. Takeuchi, K. (2010). Rebuilding the relationship between people and nature: The satoyama initiative. Ecological Research, 25(5), 891–897. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-010-0745-8

7. Berglund, B. E., Kitagawa, J., Lagerås, P., Nakamura, K., Sasaki, N., & Yasuda, Y. (2014). Traditional farming landscapes for sustainable living in Scandinavia and Japan: Global revival through the satoyama initiative. AMBIO, 43(5), 559–578. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0499-6