Hajime Ishikawa: Exploring Landscapes

May 30, 2024

This year marks the ninth year since I began visiting Kamiyama Town in Tokushima Prefecture with students from my laboratory. Kamiyama is a hilly and mountainous area in the Shikoku Mountains with a population of less than 5,000, but it is also a region often cited as a leading example of regional revitalization due to various town-wide initiatives.

It all started when an old friend who had moved to Kamiyama invited me to use the town as a field for my research. I was captivated by the scenery I saw then—private houses clinging to the steep mountain slopes characteristic of the Shikoku Mountains, and stone-walled terraced rice fields and vegetable plots that seemed to crawl up the mountainside. Since then, I have continued my activities to investigate and record the origins and characteristics of Kamiyama's landscape.

Under the theme of "Landscapes of Daily Life," I have observed and recorded the ingenuity of daily living and livelihoods seen around private houses and in gardens. I have also investigated road networks from before the era of motorization and residents' walking routes through the lens of "Landscapes of Roads." Every year, several students choose Kamiyama as their research theme. Some students have even taken a leave of absence from the university to study agricultural landscapes while undergoing a year of practical training at an agricultural corporation in Kamiyama. Landscapes are a complex layering of a region's natural environment and the society and livelihoods of the people who live there, and they are constantly changing. The exploration is endless.

Last year, as a basic survey for the landscape plan being formulated by Kamiyama Town, I began research to create a way for residents to share the "Kamiyama-esque landscapes" that should be protected or aimed for. Believing that regional identity does not necessarily exist objectively but rather within the people who perceive it, I decided to interview residents living in the town. I was able to interview over a dozen residents from different social backgrounds and generations for nearly two hours each. While detailed analysis is still ongoing, it has become clear that common, everyday landscapes become "Kamiyama's landscape" for individuals when linked to unique experiences in their lives. Furthermore, many people have gone through the experience of leaving the town to live elsewhere, only to rediscover and objectify the landscape after returning to Kamiyama.

It is not easy to travel to Shikoku from Tokyo every year with students, but after nine years, there is no longer any reason to stop. Moving forward, the challenge will be to turn the results accumulated so far into tools that more people can use.