Partly because of its deep Shinto and Buddhist roots, Japanese culture exhibits a distinctive aesthetic relationship to nature. Rather than an assembly of individual parts seen and experienced in isolation, nature is a dynamic whole witnessed in constant flux. Change is the only permanence. Traumatic change obviously came in the form of the recent Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The death toll is mounting. In the region of Matsushima, just up the coast from the hard-hit city of Sendai, upwards of 22,000 have been reported dead or missing from the devastating March 11 tsunami. Matsushima also suffered another awful blow. Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs reports serious damage to the prized landscape of the region... More
