Cultural Approaches to Environmental Challenges: From Science to Animism in Japan’s Language Curriculum

As the need for shifting dominant worldviews to address environmental sustainability becomes more urgent, animism is increasingly recognized as a valuable cultural resource. While scholars are exploring how to incorporate animism into modern education, Japan began incorporating Indigenous animistic stories into its elementary language curriculum over a half century ago in response to domestic environmental challenges. Today, these animistic stories constitute a major pillar Japan’s school curriculum. The major themes of these stories are rejection of human superiority and encouragement of human-nature interdependence. In highlighting the Japanese case and exploring these stories for the first time in the English language, this piece intends to (i) inspire those seeking to integrate similar methods into formal education curricula in other contexts, and (ii) promote, on a worldwide scale, greater sensitivity to how the underlying meanings and messages found in language curriculum and textbooks connect (or fail to connect) to environmental concerns. This work also connects to recent theoretical appeals to ‘reclaim Animism’ and re-story the world: alternative approaches to education in the Anthropocene that go beyond scientific solutionism and focus on cultural change.