Japanese / English

The Committee to Promote Resuscitation of Nature and Culture in Yamanaka

-Dreaming the fruit in 100yeas-

“The wiseman plants a tree for which he will not see the shade”

We have damaged nature by asking for ecomic development. Beauties of nature, together with our local tradition and culture have been endangered.

The principle of the Committee goes like this ”We should realize how to get along well with nature”

It is not “coexistence with nature” nor “symbiosis”, but “Nature lets us live our life”. The members should share the principle. Recently a piece of writing by Prof Honda Seiroku at Tokyo University was discovered. He was called the Father of the Japanese gardening after the war. According to the writing, he visited Yamanaka and praised highly the scenic beauty of the Kakusenkei Lavin, saying “The scale is not great but the beauties of nature is the greatest in the world.” He also made a strict proposal on how Yamanaka should be maintained in a better way toward future.

We took the opportunity to start planting ginkou trees, Prof Honda Seiroku loved, with the help of the President of Tokyo University and Tokyo University related people. The members of the committee will make a plan and carry it out asking for the fruit in 100 years. The great Haiku poet, Basho, visited Yamanaka on the way to the destination of “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”. He admired Yamanaka as Japan’s Shangri-La. We will start creating “Yamanaka with beauties of nature and legacy of culture in the Reiwa period.”