A View of the Symbiosis of the Sea and the Mountains: The Cyclical Life and View of Nature on Yakushima Island (Early Showa Period - Postwar Period)

A View of the Symbiosis of the Sea and the Mountains: The Cyclical Life and View of Nature on Yakushima Island (Early Showa Period - Postwar Period)

Yakushima is an island where the sea and mountains are surprisingly close. Steep mountains hug the coastline, and different ecosystems overlap within a few hundred meters of each other. People's lives have also been built in a back-and-forth movement between the mountains and the sea. Trees cut in the mountains are used for boats and firewood, and fish from the sea enrich the homes in the mountains. This "life of circulation" has shaped the fundamental worldview of the islanders, who see nature not as mere resources but as beings that breathe each other.

Records from the early Showa period show fishermen going out to work in the mountains on rainy days and mountain people going out to fish on calm days. The boundaries of their occupations were blurred, and they supported each other's domains. Salty wood exposed to sea breezes became more durable, and fresh water from the mountains was used to wash the bottoms of boats, an essential part of the fishing process. The accumulation of such wisdom supported the "symbiotic economy" of Yakushima.

The passage between the sea and the mountains was also deeply connected with religious beliefs. There was a custom of "alternating offerings," in which people offered seafood to the god of the mountain and prayed to the god of the sea for blessings from the mountain. Especially during the "June Lantern Festival" and the "Mountain Gods' Lecture" held in the sixth month of the lunar calendar, young men from the sea would climb the mountains and pray to the spirits of the trees and the mountain gods for safe fishing. In this way, they were not merely in awe of nature, but welcomed it as a partner with whom they could interact.

In the postwar period, the economic structure of the island changed, and forestry and fishing were organized as independent industries. However, the sense of mutual support did not disappear completely. In port towns, the custom of "bartering" remained for a long time, whereby the mountaineers carried the cedars they cut by boat and the fishermen delivered the surplus fish to the mountains. In Yakushima, "connecting" rather than dividing nature was the art of living.

Today, the "symbiotic view of the sea and mountains" is spoken of as a philosophy of environmental conservation, but its prototype was already present in the daily life of this period. Nature and man, labor and prayer, sea and forest. The island landscape of Yakushima is one in which these elements are in constant circulation and permeate each other. This was the very "wisdom of sustainable life" that the microcosm of Yakushima had cultivated over many years.