大地の再生 (Daichi no Saisei): An Experience on Ushima

The rain came in during the night. I got a message early morning, we were catching the ferry to Ushima island. Still fighting jet lag, I stepped out of bed, grabbed my Barbour and Rosa Mosa boots, two essentials in southern Japan, and ran to the pier, five minutes away, to catch the Murozumi-Ushima ferry.

Ushima is a twenty-minute ride from the mainland, on the Seto Sea, home to a small fishing community and seaweed harvesters. Thanks to our Satoyama-Satoumi project, the island is seeing a return of interest. New visitors each day, a few ancient houses being restored, even restaurants opening.

I have done a few Satoyama-Satoumi expeditions there, and every time I was handed a pair of garden gloves, I knew what it meant: hard work. Cleaning trash off the beach, sometimes piled a meter high, or collecting seaweed washed up on shore.

This morning, even with gloves in hand, it was a quick two-hour trip, to check on the new pizza oven being built and see how the work we'd started last November was holding up. Our chief gardener, Master Yano san, environmental physician, had applied a few of his techniques to restore natural balance to our bay. Giving way to nature to clear itself. Restoring harmony between mountain, shoreline and human footsteps.

To our surprise, the land had started to reorganise itself. The grass, cut low to clear the wind, had pushed a good hundred meters further inland than where we'd left it. And the five springs running down from the mountain into the bay, where Master Yano had packed the riverbed with branches, charcoal and a large pipe at the point where fresh water meets salt, bringing air and oxygen back into the soil, were coming alive again. Clearing out the decade of trash that had sat there like a plug, a sewage dump for ten years.

It was extraordinary, watching that kind of transformation happen in such a short time, in such a small, beautiful place.

ADDRESS:

Mr Yano Yukikazu, Kankyo Saisei, environmental physician working on the regeneration of living environments.
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Ushima Island, Seto Sea, Yamaguchi Ken, Japan

Mr YANO Yukikazu - Kankyo Saisei - environmental physician, working on the regeneration of living environments.