By Yoshihiro Narisawa
I like to call my style of cooking Innovative Satoyama Cuisine.
It’s difficult to find an equivalent word for satoyama in Western
languages. Translating literally, sato means a village or community
and yama means forest. Japan is an island country, and approximately
67 percent of its land mass is covered by forests. The people of Japan
have always coexisted with their surroundings by making the best
of nature’s blessings, and as such satoyama is the embodiment of
sustainable living whereby people coexist with the natural world in
a symbiotic relationship.
