The Multilocality of Satoyama Landscape, Cultural Heritage and Environmental Sustainability in Japan

Abstract

Using the versatile concept of multilocality, the paper analyses the close interrelation between Japanese landscape, cultural heritage and social construction of spatial meaning in the context of satoyama (mountain village). Originally intended as a peripheral space of subsistence within the rural economy, satoyama is considered today one of the main expressions of the Japanese local culture guided by identity mechanisms and based on complex discursive constructions of native place-based and environmental rhetoric. At the same time, the satoyama landscape has also become a transnational symbol promoted by the Japanese government which is used in national and international research programmes for environmental sustainability. The sense of multilocality of the satoyama landscape is here interpreted in its double identity value that can be put to a wide variety of political and cultural constructions of place.