This paper discusses one especially vigorous wing of the satoyama revitalization movement in Japan: the mobilization to recreate forests that produce highly valued matsutake mushrooms.

Self-sufficiency has become a dominant priority of rural sustainability in Japan. The paper examines a community mapping initiative that empowers regional residents to rediscover the character of their depleted surroundings.

Looks at popular esayari (animal-feeding) behavior in Japan, why people do it, and what its effects are.

Bodily adaptations have been integrated into human culture in a co-evolutionary process, such as the social and regulating function of the moral emotion shame. The ability to feel shame and physiological markers of it, such as blushing, are hardwired, but they are used in many different and sometimes even contradicting ways in specific cultures.

Using the examples of matsutake mushrooms in Japan, the Meratus Dayaks of the rainforests of Kalimantan, and the “rubble ecologies” of post-war Berlin, the article argues that we must pay attention to the cultural and biological synergies through which diversity continues to emerge, even in ruins.

With reference to Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society, this article considers the paradoxical managing of nuclear risk, considered at once too risky for German risk society and yet socially acceptable for a further ten years.

The aim of this article is to provide an ethical assessment of current events and trends regarding nuclear energy by introducing some thoughts from a Christian, socio-ethical point of view.