2013
Copyright PERSEE 2003-2024. Works reproduced on the PERSEE website are protected by the general rules of the Code of Intellectual Property. For strictly private, scientific or teaching purposes excluding all commercial use, reproduction and communication to the public of this document is permitted on condition that its origin and copyright are clearly mentionned.
Anne Bouchy, « Les rapports communautaires aux espaces forestiers entre politiques du dehors et stratégies du dedans : les montagnes-forêts de Sasaguri », Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie (documents), ID : 10.3406/asie.2013.1417
In the context of the present research program, this essay focuses on the relation and interrelation between the local society of Sasaguri and the forest and mountain spaces which occupy more than 60 % of the municipality's surface. In examining how the modalities of this interrelation were constructed and continue to be constructed, the author attempts to stress the complex dynamics that presided over the transformations of the natural environment and the local community, in the middle of political, social and economic evolution on the national and international levels, that informed and overwhelmed its "internal" and "external" dimensions. This survey allows us also to better understand how and why forest in Sasaguri could be labelled as "nature" and "cultural heritage" at the same time. For this purpose, the author first situates Sasaguri's land in the topographic and social context of the area, in order to show how it was open and prone to circulation. In a short presentation, she describes also the conceptual and disciplinary framework of Japanese ethnology and social anthropology, in which this approach takes its place. After having showed the diversity of the local vegetal environment, in the second section, she summarizes the usage of the term "forest-mountain" (sanrin), as folk resources which were overwhelmed by various policies and recent economical breakdowns, and points out the structural impact of the transformation of property systems. The main issues are at the same time the collective dispositions of managements, exploitation, and also the relation toward this "heritage" which is at the same time material, cultural and social, known as the "village-mountain" (sato-yama); and in a more general perspective, the eco-system constituted by these forested spaces. In the third section, several types of communal managements are analyzed, among which forest cooperatives, and the "forest of which the benefit is shared" (bunshū-rin) between several administrative and social entities. These analysis allow us to shed light on the modern evolution of the practice of "common lands" (iri.ai-chi) and their contemporary reevaluation, in local context as well as in the human sciences. The emblematic case of Mount Wakasugi and its village will let us integrate all these dynamics and to situate it in regard to the problem of the role of religious elements as a determinant operator in the relation of society with the forest. The national label of "therapy forest" that Sasaguri succeeded in obtaining in 2009 seems to be the most recent form of the interrelations around which the local identity is constructed.