Satoyama (里山)
During a residency at the ZUTTOSOKO Art Center in May 2025, we discovered Iitate—a village nestled between the city of Fukushima and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It is a place of great rural beauty, characterized by a landscape shaped by countless rice paddies.
The individual plots of land are tiny—reminiscent of the layouts used by oyster farmers along the Atlantic coast, who also manage water levels by opening and closing sluice gates. In our initial discussions with our partners, Tao Yoichi and Jun Yano of the ZUTTOSOKO Art Center, the situation revealed itself to be complex: this rural community, where agriculture was once highly valued, now faces the challenge of cultivating soil that has become heavily radioactive—all without the benefit of any proven, reliable methods.
It is worth noting that the radioactive elements released into the atmosphere during the disaster have different decay rates. Cesium-134 loses half its radioactivity every two years—meaning its current levels are negligible—whereas Cesium-137 takes 30 years to lose half its radioactivity, meaning it remains highly active in Iitate today. Consequently, the Japanese government and the utility company responsible for the nuclear plant opted to use bulldozers to scrape away the top five centimeters of soil. This removed earth was either buried or packed into massive, sealed bags, which now sit across the landscape like pieces on a chessboard.
To replace the removed topsoil, agricultural land was often covered with soil taken from the mountain undergrowth. However, this intensive, large-scale intervention has failed to produce fertile soil. Farmers who once relied on highly refined expertise—accumulated by generations of rice cultivators—now appear discouraged and have largely ceased to farm. A new phase of engineering is currently underway, encouraging farmers to adopt soilless agricultural practices. Consequently, the rural landscape is becoming blanketed with greenhouses, photovoltaic panels, and—less frequently—cultivation systems equipped with infrastructure that integrates dynamic lighting, drip irrigation, and chemical inputs.
Yet, despite financial incentives from the state, few residents have chosen to return home. It is only gradually that we come to realize most of these houses now stand empty. These deserted dwellings bear witness to family destinies shattered at a specific moment in history; they stand in silence, removed from the flow of daily life. We have therefore chosen to focus on these uninhabited homes—or the faint traces left where they stood before their state-mandated demolition—as one of the few visible manifestations of the invisible disorder wrought by the 2011 catastrophe: an experience that is both intangible and ineffable. For radiation eludes all human perception; our animal bodies detect no warning signs, and this unprecedented situation makes it difficult to share a sensory experience of what occurred.
Problem Statement and installations
The House of Bonds (Philippe Mouillon)
In this land, contaminated by radioactivity, I chose to place an archetypal house—a universal form, much like the one children the world over might draw. It is constructed from folded steel sheets, held stable solely by tensioned ropes that allow the metal elements to shift and vibrate whenever the wind blows. These ropes act as guy lines, anchoring this precarious structure and spreading it across the landscape like a rhizome of connections, knots, and attachments. Inside, the house shelters a carpet of snail shells—creatures that never part with their protective homes until death. This rudimentary dwelling straddles a rock that, to me, evokes the enduring stability of time.
This fragility mirrors that of humanity itself. For here, in Iitate, previous generations spent centuries living in close attunement with their environment. They dotted the landscape with understated Shinto shrines, marking out a striking tree, a spring, or an unusual rock formation with a few upright stones—often ancient, and inscribed with words, or sometimes the figure of a human or an animal. These animistic markers lend a profound depth to the landscape, reminding us how, since time immemorial, the signs offered by nature have been tirelessly observed and interpreted here.
Today, this bond with nature—a sensitivity passed down through generations—appears to have been severed; most dramatically here in Fukushima, but also across the globe. Humanity’s attention seems to have drifted away from the very ground beneath our feet—the *humus*, which shares an etymological root with the words *human*, *humility*, and *humanity*. This detachment goes hand in hand with the intensive exploitation and widespread mistreatment of our soils, driving the collapse of ecological balances. In this sense, Iitate finds itself at the forefront of a new line of inquiry regarding humanity’s relationship with its living environment—specifically, the future stability and persistence of the conditions necessary for Earth to remain habitable.
Tremors (Maryvonne Arnaud)
During my stay in Iitate in May 2025, I explored and observed—as much as was possible—the surrounding area: the countryside, the rice paddies, the deserted houses, the abandoned gardens, the pruned trees, the bulldozers carving out roads and shifting mountains, and the reconstruction efforts as well. I was gripped by deeply contradictory feelings—a sense that something was constantly slipping through my fingers. I felt a sense of wonder at a spring full of promise, and was charmed by the small shrines and carved stone figures—animals like cats and pigs, or little human-like characters. All my senses were heightened, eager to drink in these unfamiliar landscapes, yet they were repeatedly checked by the “beep-beep” of a Geiger counter, which stood in stark contradiction to my own perceptions. Neither my eyes, nor my ears, nor my nose could tell me anything about the highly fluctuating presence of radioactivity.
The few inhabitants I encountered always wore a smile, yet neither their voices, their silences, nor their gestures offered any real insight. I found myself confronted by my own inability to read, think, understand, interpret, or imagine. I experienced a sense of imbalance—an internal tremor that resonated with the great earthquake of March 2011.
Faced with these difficulties—these obstacles—I discovered that, unbeknownst to me, certain habits, codes, methods, ways of thinking, and preconceived notions had become embedded in the very way I looked at the world; my capacity to feel and translate those feelings into a visual language simply did not function here. I photographed as one might take notes—photographing to remember, to commit things to memory. The camera served as a crutch, a point of support that compelled me to look, to imagine, and to think.
What can be said of this beauty, this life, this vital energy exuding from the landscape—this human energy, moving earth, planting, cultivating, striving to make the invisible visible?
My attention was frequently drawn to the many greenhouses scattered across the landscape, where various agricultural experiments take place. They brought to mind the cycle of the seasons, rebirth, the hope of spring, the care lavished upon plants, and the joy of watching a seed transform into a flower or a vegetable. These are spaces conducive to cultivation—allowing both seeds and dreams to germinate, grow, and find protection. Yet, they also evoked for me the loss of soil, the severing of our connection to the earth—a form of “soilless” cultivation.
I therefore chose to use a greenhouse of my own, housing containers that hold small gardens—gardens composed of photographs mounted on springs or suspended in the air. These are gardens in motion—unstable and fragile—blending natural or carved stones, sculptures, small Jizō statuettes, plants, mounds of earth, moss, and patches of soil. Small vessels of water reflect the sky, while fragments of suspended mirrors are interspersed among the photographs, multiplying their vibrations. This installation reflects the fragility of our world, the importance of trees, animals, the wind, and the sky, as well as the necessity of caring for the life that surrounds us.
By repeating this process year after year—engaging artists from around the world who bring with them cultural perspectives rooted in the land—ZUTTOSOKO aims to create a unique, novel form of heritage that is tied to the specific history of the site, yet possesses universal significance. This approach is known as *Satoyama* (里山) and embodies a Japanese vision of harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature.
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