A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
satoyama
Satoyama is the managed landscape between a Japanese village and the mountain wilderness behind it: coppiced woodland, grassland cut for thatch and fodder, irrigation ponds, terraced rice paddies, and the paths and channels linking them. It was worked on a cycle for centuries, and the mosaic that produced holds a large share of Japan’s biodiversity, much of it dependent on the work continuing.
Etymology
The word joins the Japanese for the inhabited country around a village with the word for mountain, so it names the ground between the two rather than either. Its coastal counterpart is satoumi. Both words describe an arrangement that is thousands of years old and only acquired a name once it started disappearing.