Rewilding and Re-rooting: Ecotherapy with the Earth Spirits of Local Folklore


主題簡介

Amidst the mounting challenges facing researchers, educators and students around the world, how can we retrieve a sense of joy and presence in our work? In the face of sweeping social and environmental change affecting landscapes and communities all around us, how can we weave together the mind and the heart, the eyes, the hands and the feet in what we do?


This interactive talk will suggest that reconnecting with the wild imagination of folktales and learning from their grounded ecological wisdom may open some meaningful paths. All cultures around the world have uniquely rich and diverse folkloric traditions with deep roots in local landscapes and ancient spiritual beliefs. We will zoom in on one such culture, Japan, in the company of shape-shifting animals and grumpy mountain crones. Theirs is an animate world where existence is precarious but also lived in intimate connection with the sacredness of wild places and the natural cycles of life and death, growth and decay. Hence many of such characters and themes have an archetypal quality, shining a light on our own lives in ways that both expand and deepen our relationship with the earth's wisdom.


We will be weaving together storytelling and scholarship, guided meditations and other exercises of nature connection inspired by the practice of ecotherapy to rewild and re-root our ecological imagination more deeply in the places where our lives unfold – and thereby to confront these challenging times of uncertainty with a renewed sense of purpose and creativity. 


講者簡介

Dr. Daniela Kato is a Japan-based independent scholar, writer, speaker and facilitator with an academic background in the Environmental Humanities and training in Ecotherapy. After more than a decade of teaching environmental literature and film in academia, in 2021 she moved to a small village in northern Yamanashi, where she currently focuses on creative projects of rural revitalization that weave together ecotherapy practice, the local folklore and landscape, storytelling, crafts and foraging in community. She is also a guest tutor in Ecotherapy at Tariki Trust, UK.


Her research navigates the cross-fertilizing hinterlands of folklore and mythology, the rural imagination and creative practices of place-making, with an emphasis on East Asia. In addition to her extensive range of academic publications, she regularly writes creative pieces for The Dark Mountain Project, Garland Magazine and other venues. 

DanielaKato_Rewilding&Rerooting_Talk20240220_FurtherReading.pdf

生態療癒參考書目 

On creatively connecting to place and the wild through stories and the folk imagination

Kato, Daniela. “The Adzuki Bean and the Mountain Crone.” The Dark Mountain Project, March 2022, https://dark-mountain.net/the-adzuki-bean-and-the-mountain-crone/.

---. “Slashed by the Wind.” The Dark Mountain Project, October 2023, https://dark-mountain.net/slashed-by-the-wind/.

---. “Tantaka and Red Shiso.” The Dark Mountain Project, July 2023, https://dark-mountain.net/tantaka-and-red-shiso/.

Shaw, Martin. Courting the Wild Twin. Chelsea Green, 2020.

---. The Smoke Hole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass. Chelsea Green, 2021.

 

On Japan’s folklore, nature and the landscape

Dorson, Richard M. Folk Legends of Japan. Tuttle, 1961.

Shirane, Haruo. Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature and the Arts. Columbia UP, 2012.

 

On Yōkai culture

Foster, Michael Dylan. The Book of Yōkai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore. U of California P, 2015.

---. Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai. U of California P, 2009.

Komatsu, Kazuhiko. An Introduction to Yōkai Culture: Monsters, Ghosts and Outsiders in Japanese History. Translated by Yoda Hiroko and Matt Alt. Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2017.

 

Folktale collections

Hearn, Lafcadio. 1904. Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Tuttle, 2005. (Freely available on Project Gutenberg).

Japanese Tales from Times Past: Stories of Fantasy and Folklore from the Konjaku Monogatari Shu. Translated by Naoshi Koriyama and Bruce Allen. Tuttle, 2015.

 

On environmentally-based therapies / ecotherapy

Brazier, Caroline.  Acorns Among the Grass: Adventures in Eco-Therapy. O-Books, 2011.

---. Ecotherapy in Practice: A Buddhist Model. Routledge, 2018.