Mitsuhiko Imamori Satoyama Story In Harmony with Neighboring Nature

This book is a careful woven together of photographs and text, capturing the activities of Satoyama, a community that photographer Imamori Mitsuhiko has been observing for many years.

"Satoyama" is a place that has been shaped by the interplay between human life and nature, but also by the mutual support of each other.
This book captures insects, small animals, rice terraces, scrub forests, and the time of the people who live there with a quiet gaze.

Much of the landscape that certainly existed at that time is already being lost due to land development, etc. This book is therefore both a record of the disappearing satoyama and a device for evoking memories.

The five essays included in this book vividly recount the interactions and events that took place with the people he encountered in the satoyama, bringing to mind the smells, temperatures, and even the flow of time that cannot be conveyed through photographs alone. With each turn of the page, this masterpiece makes you reconsider the distance between humans and nature, which was once so close to them.

[Title] Satoyama Monogatari In Harmony with Neighboring Nature
[Publisher] Shinchosha
[Date of publication] November 25, 1995
[Number of pages] 160 pages
[Size] Approx. 346*262*21mm, 1612g
[Format] Hardcover
[Language] Japanese, English
[Title reading] Satyamamonogatari
[Authors/Editors] Mitsuhiko Imamori/Author, Takashi Shimada/Book design
[Printing] Dai Nippon Printing/Printing and Binding (Kikuo Mori/Printing Director)
[ISBN] 4104085014
[Condition] Used [7] Above average (obi crease, slight stains)
[Accessories] Obi
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Mitsuhiko Imamori (1954-)

Born in Shiga Prefecture in 1954. Photographer.

Graduated from the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Kinki University.
After graduating from university, he aspired to become a photographer specializing in insect photography, and worked at a commercial photo studio for about two years to master his photography skills.
He became an independent professional photographer in 1980.
In 1984, he moved his base of operations to the Ogi district, located about 20km north of the center of Otsu City, where rice terraces and nature remain.

Starting with a visit to Kalimantan in 1974, he continued to travel abroad for reporting, and in 1988 he published a photo book titled "Insect Chronicles," a compilation of approximately 1,700 photographs he had taken around Lake Biwa since 1976.
His perspective on the familiar satoyama (satoyama forests) was highly praised both at home and abroad, and his companion work, "World Insect Chronicles," was translated into French and German. From the same year, he began publishing his works and articles continuously in the natural history magazine "Anima" (Heibonsha).

In 1989, he won the 3rd Anima Award for his series of photographs, "Myrmecophytes of South America," which captured the symbiotic relationship between the myrmecophyte Cecropia and Aztec ants. Since then, he has continued to communicate the relationship between nature and humans through his photographs and writings, centered around the concept of "satoyama."
Since 2000, he has also been involved in the production of television nature and animal programs, such as NHK Special.

Since 2006, he has also been working on paper cutting, exploring the beauty of nature's forms through a different medium to photography. In recent years, he has also been active as a gardener, environmental farmer, and Satoyama environmental producer.

His younger brother is Yosuke Imamori, a miniature painter who paints freshwater fish and wild birds of Shiga.
He was also friends with photographer Michio Hoshino, who is known to have stayed at Imamori's home in Shiga.

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Michio Hoshino