- School of Nature: The Children of Satoyama
It’s an opportune time to explore Japan’s relationship to nature, what with The Cove‘s Oscar win and yesterday’s arrest in Tokyo of New Zealand anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune.
Surely this isn’t the kind of profile the Japan Information Center is going for with its Japan and Nature Film Series, concluding Friday 3/12 at Columbia College with a free screening of Masaki Haramura’s documentary School of Nature: The Children of Satoyama.
“Children will not grow unless they are put in a risky environment. They will not grow healthily unless they get injured, covered in mud and play rough and physical games,” Eijyu Miyazaki says in the film. Haramura examines Miyazaki’s iconoclastic pedagogy and its impact at the Kisarazu Community Nursery School in Satoyama, Chiba.