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JAPANESE-BRAZILIANS DIALOGUES AND THE
INSEPARABILITY OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: LESSONS LEARNED IN TRADITIONAL FESTIVALS
OF AUTUMN IN JAPAN
Lucia Shiguemi Izawa Kawahara
Michèle Sato
José Puppim de Oliveira
Koji Nakamura
This brief news
reveal the preliminary results we have sought to establish between traditional
knowledge and environmental sustainability. The Research Group on Environmental
Education, Communication and the Arts at the Federal University of Mato Grosso
- GPEA / UFMT in Brazil has conducted research on the intertwining of ecosystem
services with the Pantanal’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). In the
second half of 2012, we extended our eyes to more distant horizons and we were have
experienced our research in the lands of the rising sun, Japan. We opened the
dialogue with farmers’ Noto Jima (Noto Island), a small island in the Bay of
the Noto Peninsula, Ishikawa’s province, in the central-west of the Japanese
archipelago, surrounded by Sea or the West Sea Japan, and we have identified an
important Cultural Ecosystem Services in evidence, the Akimatsuri - traditional
festivals fall.
Akimatsuri
- traditional festivals are celebrated on autumn by farming communities in
Japan, therefore, happen in almost any Japanese territory at the end of the
rice harvest. The festivals are Shinto rituals of thanksgiving and celebration
of the good harvest, plenty and prosperity achieved in the community, at which
each family joins its members to demonstrate their gratitude that is expressed
in abundant distribution offerings to the gods and to fellow banquet.
At
festivals, we identified a core catalyst of meanings and values cultivated
over thousands of years: the rice. This cereal founded a centre aggregator and
developer of the intrinsic relationship between the different types of
ecosystem services. Rice is the staple food of the Japanese and their culture
is an indispensable tradition in Japanese lands, their culture connotes next to
the sacred (BUBER, 1985) and not by chance, this tiny and vital grain to the
life of these people, constitutes itself, a supporting ecosystem service, a
provisioning food, regulating plant and cultural symbol.
The Case
Study (the festivals fall on the Isle of Noto) was conducted through interviews,
observation and dialogue with its inhabitants reaffirmed the hypothesis that it
is no longer possible to understand the world and the environmental crisis if
we continue to fragment our search (GASKEEL, 2002). In this context, we have
learned that urges to find the interconnection phenomena. The ritual of the
autumn festival in Japan, as well as the traditional festivals in the wetland
in Brazil, reveal traditional knowledge and practices that add complexity in
the local culture, respect for the territory and they are symbols of a gift to
the own lands.
In Japan,
rice is the cornerstone celebration of autumn, it fulfils its role of
regulating and support from their own cultivation in traditional ways because
of the terraced rice fields provide the maintenance of ecosystem health, as
well as conservation biodiversity during the four seasons (figure 1). At the
same time, it is provision service and cultural expression in the obligatory
presence of thanks and appreciated delicacy of different preparation methods,
banquet that satisfies body and soul of the community members.
Photo: Lúcia Kawahara
Rice is,
therefore, an essential grain to agriculture, economics, health and culture of
the region, linking ecosystem services and making sure the inseparability
between culture and nature - and between ecosystems and festivities.
Culture and nature
Autumn water flows
Grain rice gentle grows
(Haiku by Mimi Sato)
….
Acknowledgment:
Pantanal Research Centre (CPP)
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