Send message to Author

Short abstract

This research examines how ibis conservation on Sado Island reorganizes rice farming into engineered habitats. It argues that satoyama is not restored but assembled through bioinfrastructures, policies, and metrics, producing new frontiers where agriculture and conservation are made to cohere.

Long abstract

Following the extinction of Japan’s last crested ibis on Sado Island, conservation efforts have unfolded through an opportunistic alignment in which it remains unclear whether the bird is being saved through rice cultivation, or rice is being sustained through the return of the bird. Framed under the ideal of satoyama, an imagined landscape of harmonious coexistence among humans and nonhumans, ibises gifted from China are bred within designed wetlands, while Koshihikari, a once prestigious rice variety weakened by typhoon damage, has been revalued through symbiotic cultivation tied to ibis habitat making. Conservation thus proceeds through a chicken and egg paradox in which species recovery and agricultural revitalization become mutually justificatory. I examine the bioinfrastructures that sustain this paradox. I argue that satoyama on Sado is not a preexisting natureculture awaiting restoration, but a politically fabricated landscape frontier. What appears as ecological revival is the realignment of rice agriculture, species recovery, rural branding, and state subsidies. Paddy fields are reorganized through pesticide restrictions, redesigned water management, monitoring technologies, alongside certification schemes. These interventions do not simply protect a bird; they transform land use, discipline farming practices, and redistribute value across soils, farmers, birds, markets, and state agencies. Satoyama emerges as an effect of infrastructural coordination even as local actors hold divergent understandings of what it is. I also situate satoyama beyond Japan, where it travels less as a cultural inheritance than as a portable assemblage sustained by policy imaginaries that generate new epistemic frontiers.

Keywords: Satoyama, Bioinfrastructure, Japanese Crested Ibis, Conservation