Layout and composition of house-embracing trees in an island Feng Shui village in Okinawa, Japan

Abstract

A Feng Shui village landscape, which embodies the symbiosis of nature and man, might be re-evaluated as an ideal landscape model in East Asia. Ho:go is one essential word for a Feng Shui village in Ryukyu Islands. The literal meaning of Ho:go is to embrace and protect by forest planting in order to retain the living energy. Ho:go also refers to a forest belt that encircles a house, a village, several neighbouring villages, or the coastline, and is called House Ho:go (habitat-embracing forest), Village Ho:go, District Ho:go, and Coastline Ho:go, respectively. However, such Feng Shui village landscapes have disappeared rapidly since Word War II because of the changing life styles. In order to preserve the traditional Feng Shui village landscape, our primary research focus concerns the actual structure, management, and regeneration of house-embracing Garcinia subelliptica Merr. trees. We chose to survey the two best preserved villages of Tonaki Island and Bise village in northern Okinawa Island. We reproduced the actual distribution and sizes of house-embracing G. subelliptica trees by HO CAD software. We found tree lines were much thicker in the borderline of the village, in particular, those either facing the coast or standing in the north. In contrast, there was usually one tree line inside the village. The surveyed G. subelliptica trees on Tonaki Island were much smaller than those in Bise Village. More demand of G. subelliptica trees for timber use in this small isolated island and better maintenance might be assumed to be the reasons for the difference in tree height between the two surveyed villages. Thus, proper maintenance in terms of cutting and cleaning are necessary to preserve house-embracing G. subelliptica tree lines in a traditional Feng Shui village. A traditional village landscape might also serve purposes for forest tourism and environmental education.