Good news today! The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) has thrown its weight behind a plan to restore the natural beauty of Kyoto’s Ogurayama. The ten-year reafforestation project aims to undo the damage wrought by human neglect and the recent of blight of diseases that are killing off much of the native oaks and pines. Mount Ogura has been famed since Heian times as the “Poets Mount” and is celebrated in the tanka anthology Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (100 poems by 100 poets). It’s nice to know that volunteer groups such as People Together for Mount Ogura (PTO) are no longer fighting these problems on their own.
Full article on the BTMU site here: Start of the Ogurayama Restoration Project in Kyoto
Get involved with PTO’s conservation activities here: Let’s begin with what we can do!
Certainly this sounds good, but P.T.O. feels that this new well-funded project should be judged on its actions rather than on the fanfare at inception. It would seem to concern largely the East face of Mt. Ogura, which is ‘shakei’ (borrowed view) behind the temples. We wonder what sort of volunteer groups it is going to manage to get up onto the Mount to plant all the new trees. Our NPO, for example, has not yet been invited to participate. Fingers crossed, though, that this leads to more and more taking an interest in caring for this long-neglected hill. Let’s see how their money is used.
Thank you for your thoughts, Stephen!