The Three Ecologies in Minakata Kumagusu’s Environmental Movement

Abstract

This article introduces an environmental movement in Japan in the early 20th century, when the country was going through the process of rapid modernization. The movement, generally known as the Anti-Amalgamation of Shrines Movement, was carried out by Minakata Kumagusu, an encyclopedic naturalist. The author translates several excerpts from Minakata’s letter, which was addressed to a professor of botany, into English and explicates the opinions stated there in terms of the three ecologies: the ecology of biology, the ecology of society, and the ecology of mind. Minakata’s scientific knowledge of biotic factors in the densely forested Kumano region where he lived, his extensive understanding of the folklore-imagination rooted in the land, and his Buddhistic insight into the universe are closely interconnected to support his passionate appeal to save the forest from devastation.