Tree and Soil Robert Knoth & Antoinette de Jong
故郷 兎追いし 彼の山 小鮒釣りし 彼の川 夢は今も 巡りて 忘れ難き 故郷 如何にいます 父母 恙無しや 友がき 雨に風に つけても 思い出づる 故郷 志を 果たして いつの日にか 帰らん 山は靑き 故郷 水は淸き 故郷
Tree and Soil Robert Knoth & Antoinette de Jong
The Fukushima Landscape: a Mirror of the Anthropocene
Furusato I chased after rabbits on that mountain I fished for minnows in that river I still dream of those days even now Oh, how I miss my old country home Father and mother―are they doing well? Is everything well with my old friends? When the rain falls, when the wind blows, I stop and recall of my old country home Some day when I have done what I set out to do, I’ll return home one of these days Where the mountains are green, my old country home Where the waters are clear, my old country home
In our present day world, humanity is being forced to reassess its relationship to the environment. As long as we continue to control land use, natural resources and biospheres as we have done in recent times, the instrumental view of nature will dominate the political, economic and cultural perspective of both metropolitan and rural areas and our views on landscape, water, air, earth, plant and animal. However, the challenges of the Anthropocene, the current geological era viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment, demand an urgent and comprehensive inquiry into the limits and possibilities of our shared human culture. The conundrum we face leads to great uncertainty rooted in the need to reassess what nature means in the context of our current era, and indeed, what culture means. The prevailing uncertainty regarding Earth’s future as a living system touches upon each individual in a deeply personal way. This uncertainty forces us to reflect on the question: does nature in and of itself have intrinsic values, separate from our perception of them? May she exist because of and with herself? Those raised in the Western intellectual tradition tend to value opposition and binary distinction in their classification of the world. Can we build a worldview that transcends a simple nature-culture dichotomy and explores the deep-rooted complexities embraced by, for example, Japanese tradition? It is clear that we have reached an inflection point in how we understand the nature-culture relationship. If nature is on the way to become culture, as some say, does that mean an artificial, technological world in which we entertain a one-sided relationship with nature? Or, with nature and culture merging more and more in the Anthropocene, will we allow nature to bend our perception of culture to her shape, bringing deep changes to human culture and opening the way for collaboration: working with nature to find new solutions rather than against her? The Anthropocene demands a hybrid culture where both nature and culture contribute and cross-fertilise each other. At 2.46 pm on March 11, 2011, Japan was confronted with both a natural and a nuclear disaster. The Tōhoku earthquake –at 9.0 on the Richter scale the most powerful temblor to hit Japan in recorded history– triggered a tsunami. An hour later, 14-metre
high waves breached the seawall protecting the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, initiating a catastrophic cascade of failures. The water disabled emergency generators powering the reactor cooling systems; triggering meltdowns in the cores of reactors 1, 2 and 3; which in turn released vast quantities of both radioactive material and hydrogen; which then exploded, spreading irradiated fallout across a wide area. The whole local ecosystem was contaminated. Some 160,000 people were evacuated from a 20km zone around the plant, leaving houses, villages, communities and ancestral lands which in some cases families had occupied for centuries. There are still deep wounds and scars in the landscape and in the lives of those not able to return to their homes, as Richard Lloyd Parry recounts in his deeply moving literary nonfiction book Ghosts of the Tsunami (2017). Radiation levels are still high, and in several areas which have been decontaminated radiation levels are rising again: 70 per cent of the contaminated land is forest and the cycle of nature pumps pollution from leaves, to soil, to roots, to groundwater. Fukushima stands as a crucial example of what the Anthropocene confronts us with. Japanese culture is accustomed to having to deal with the forces of nature like tsunami’s, heavy rainfall, landslides, inundations and heatwaves. But what happened in Fukushima had both natural and human causes. The accident was, in the words of the Japanese Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) “a profoundly manmade disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented”. It proved how man’s wish for dominating the biospheres of the earth through political, economic and technological hubris, leads to major disasters. Mankind, wishing to control nature, has itself become an uncontrollable force. Fukushima poses essential questions to our national and global culture: at what cost can we build expansive economies without considering a true responsibility for natural resources, technology, waste and people? A new sensitivity to nature and landscape must alter our environmental behavior on both a political and individual level, creating a bio-emancipated culture that fosters a strong sustainable relationship between mankind and its environment with a new sense of natural rights and justice that encompasses the natural world.
Kenta Sato I used to go to the mountains and pick sansai (wild) vegetables during my lunchbreak and make them into tempura and eat them. I hiked a lot. This is a place where you can live with nature, stress-free. Even when I was little I would go to the mountains and teach myself which mushrooms were edible and which ones were not. There is a river flowing there and little ponds. I know where the fish gather and I could even catch them with my hands. You could say I was brought up by nature. The fields sway with the wind. You can hear the grains rustle in the breeze. In the summer there is a carpet of deep emerald green. The sky is blue with bright clouds, the colours are very vivid. In the spring we would plant out the rice, and at the end of summer, all the villagers would come together to clear the weeds from overgrown gardens and fields, houses and even roads.
Tree and Soil All photography from Fukushima Prefecture Japan, all scans of plant materials from Hortus Botanicus Leiden by Antoinette de Jong and Robert Knoth. Essay Prof. Dr. Erik A. de Jong, ARTIS Chair for Culture, Landscape and Nature at the University of Amsterdam. Editorial advice and curator Iris Sikking Text editing Tim Johnston Graphic design Kummer & Herrman Printing and lithography Rob Stolk, Amsterdam ISBN 978-3-96070-047-0 First and only edition, 2020
Published by Hartmann Books This book was made possible with the generous cooperation of: Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
And in cooperation with:
Financial support was given by:
Images A parade of ghosts and yokai (goblins), by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861). Courtesy of Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Coll.no. RV-3513-601. Bald-headed mikoshi-nyūdō yokai with ever-extending neck, by Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788). Courtesy of Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Coll.nr. RV-1302-15. Miyamoto Musashi defeats a yamazame (mountain shark), by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861). Courtesy of Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Coll. no. RV-2525-435. Music and dance while admiring the cherry blossoms in spring, by Kawahara Keiga (1786-1860?). Courtesy of Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Coll. No. RV-360-432.0 Ju’unryū Kōsonshō conjuring a storm, from the series ‘One hundred and eight heroes of the popular Suikoden’, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861). Courtesy of Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Coll. no. RV-3437-216. Princess Tamatori attacked by an octopus while she attempts to reclaim the magical jewel used by the sea god to control the tides, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861). Courtesy of Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Coll. no. RV-1353-1020. The sailor Tokuso and the sea monster Umibōzu, who made violent storms on the last day of the year, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861). Courtesy of Collectie Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Coll. no. RV-1882-10. Juniperus Rigida, Acer Japonicum, Prunus Japonica, Hydrangea ‘Otaksa’ from Flora Japonica, Dr. Ph. Fr. Von Siebold and J. G. Zuccarini. Courtesy of Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden, Coll. no. 341 A 10-11. All other images by Kawahara Keiga (1786-1860?), Siebold Collection. Courtesy of Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden.
Excerpts Predicted spatio-temporal dynamics of radiocaesium deposited onto forests following the Fukushima nuclear accident. By Shoji Hashimoto, Toshiya Matsuura, Kazuki Nanko, Igor Linkov, George Shaw and Shinji Kaneko. Radiocaesium Transfer in Forest Insect Communities after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident. By Yumiko Ishii, Seiji Hayashi and Noriko Takamura.
This project could not have been realized without the cooperation and support of many people. We are grateful to Kenta Sato, Hiroshi Tada, Akimoto Tamura, Sadami and Hanayodes Kobayashi and many others in Fukushima who shared their stories with us.
© Antoinette de Jong and Robert Knoth www.knothdejong.com
Also, we thank Tomoaki Akasaka, Jan Beranek, Simon Burer, Ingeborg Eggink, Yumi Goto, Leo van Hee, Menno Hooft, Katarina Jazbec, Greg McNevin, Yann Mingard, Steven van der Mije, Kazuma Obara, Jan van der Putten, Jenny de Roode, Christel Schollaardt, Carla Teune, Esther Vossen, Maartje Wildeman and all who have contributed through Voordekunst.
www.hartmannprojects.com
Special thanks to Tim Johnston, Erik de Jong, John Novis, Jan Willem Steenmeijer and a gracious bow to Iris Sikking.
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