People often associate Shinto with reverence of rice. The yearly cycle rotates around the planting and harvesting of the crop, and rice is seen as central to the Japanese identity. In addition, rice wine in the form of saké … Read the rest
Category: Green issues (Page 13 of 16)
Recently I’ve been researching Japan’s sixteen World Heritage Sites. One of them is the mountainous forest range in northern Honshu known as Shirakami-Sanchi. it has one of the largest primeval beech forests in the world, and reading about it led … Read the rest
Could you tell us about your background?
At Waseda University I studied the politics of forest conservation and did an internship in Kenya. It made me think about the role of culture and how to make use of traditional ways. … Read the rest
Arne Kalland, professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, here responds to an article by Aike Rots on Shinto’s sacred forests (see Part One.) For the full article, click here.
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The Japanese national essence
Nihonjinron
Our friend Aike Rots is carrying out research on Shinto’s environmental policies. Here is an extract from a piece he has written entitled “Shinto’s sacred forests”. (The full article can be found here.)
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Interestingly, in Japan, Jinja Honchō … Read the rest
This evening I went to a talk by Satish Kumar, whose magazine Resurgence I used to subscribe to in the 1970s… ah, those heady days of youthful idealism! Unlike others, Satish still keeps the faith and continues to proclaim … Read the rest
Naturalist Kevin Short, writing for the Daily Yomiuri, provides further thoughts below on the subject of sacred groves. I imagine the title is not of his choosing, but he seems to have done his Shinto research well enough…. (The … Read the rest