Doctor of Earth calls for regeneration and connection, “Yui”

The summer of 2023 has just begun, but heat waves and excess rains have already destroyed communities in the northern hemispheres, be it Shizuoka and Wakayama in Japan or Texas and Boston in the United States. More are surely on the way, with El Niño back. What exacerbates climate disasters is the choking of our soil, water and air in the process of modernization, says Tomonori Yano, the landscape designer also known as a doctor for earth regeneration.

Balance in the ecosystem depends on “Yui”

The documentary on his work, Moribito, starts with a scene in Yakushima Island off the coast of Kagoshima, Kyushu. Designated as a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, the island is covered by an ancient cedar forest housing Japan’s oldest living trees that can date back to 7,000 years ago. Yet even on this secluded paradise for biodiversity, its ecosystem is slowly dying, because of human activities.

Dr. Yano picks up his sickle and slashes tall grasses just enough for the wind to come through. He takes his hand shovel and digs small holes to help the water drain. Tiny interventions may be, but trees come back to life (I tried it in my backyard in December, and a tree sprang twice as many leaves in April compared to a year ago). “Air and water flow all around the Earth, just as the human body depends on the circulation of the air we breathe and blood running through our veins.”

“In nature, all living things face limitations of some kind. They all share certain risks pertaining to survival, and that keeps a balance in the ecosystem. They depend on one another…it is this connection, ‘Yui,’ that keeps all of us alive.”

Lost commitment to honor and respect for nature

This connection used to include people who looked up to nature with awe and respect. “Forest (“Mori” in Japanese) is where we promised to gods of the land that we will never hurt or dishonor it, pleaded them to let us use it with care, and marked our commitment with strings around it.”

Yet, national development agendas have led to the concretization of land. Highways, dams, cemented riverbanks, shorelines and water pathways…the soil underneath can neither breathe nor drain water. Once typhoons hit, massive amounts of rainwater skate over the saturated and hardened “Gleysol.” “Mudslides are the symptom of the earth taking a deep breath. It tries harder to do so, because of the lid over it.” Dr. Yano speaks of the earth as if it is one of us.

Film “Moribito” encourages us to trust the power of nature

The film’s director, Setsuko Maeda, is a former music and movie magazine editor and a city assembly member in Kunitachi, Tokyo. She met Dr. Yano about 10 years ago through an effort to rescue roadside trees. A complete novice to moviemaking, she attended a workshop on documentary production in March 2018 and started filming Moribito two months later.

“I had been feeling suffocated ever since the Fukushima nuclear disaster,” she recalls. “But when I heard Dr. Yano say that even insects help the airflow by eating leaves,” I was moved by his unwavering trust and confidence in nature. I wanted to see the world as he did.”

The beauty of Dr. Yano’s work is that you can start anywhere — in your gardens, schoolyards, public and community parks, and forests nearby — with a hand shovel. Amid his busy schedule traveling around the country to save dying trees, he hosts monthly seminars at his residence in Yamanashi, just an hour west of Tokyo. “A small step that any one of us can make, just like all other living things, and it will save us all,” says Maeda. The movie is now being released outside Japan, starting in France this fall.

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