If I were to hear a voice coming from the depths of a dark forest, I would think it would be the grief of the Earth Mother Goddess, cursing human brutality:
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The customs that existed in Japan in the past contributed to “protecting and maintaining the natural environment.” However, as a result of the easy abandonment of those customs due to bureaucratic rationalism for human convenience, Japan is what it is today.
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Minakata Kumagusu, a folklorist who was mentioned in the recent drama “らんまん”. I knew that he was against the ordinance to enshrine shrines and was adamant about preserving the “shrine forest: 鎮守の森”. But I didn’t know that he was being hated by the government at the time. I learned this for the first time in the らんまん (in addition, although Mantaro had a good impression of Minakata Kumagusu in the drama, Tomitaro Makino in real life gave him a rather harsh evaluation.)

If so, is the “dark forest: 暗い森” that appears at the beginning of this song the “shrine forest”? No, that’s not the case.
The word “dark forest” came first, and then the word “guardian forest” came to mind. Well, it’s like that.

My works, especially my songs, have often been described as strange, such as “like a witch lurking in a dark forest! (If people call a heretic woman who was chased from her home and forced to flee into the forest a witch; Oddly enough, I’m also something similar!)” or “I want to listen to it in a sea of trees”. Then I wondered what “forest” meant to other people, and I thought about it for a moment, and this is how I came up with the lyrics.

It’s a song that sounds like something strange and terrifying, different from humans, is whispering to the listener. I felt that my songs might be perceived that way by some people. So I decided to try and make the voice of a terrifying being descend. Then, I thought again.

After thinking about it, the words that came to mind were the title of the article. I thought that if a voice could be heard coming from the dense, eerie forest, it must be the voice of someone grieving at the sight of a world ruled by humans.

Human beings are recklessly destroying the environment without giving much thought to the negative effects that will come after that, and “someone who was not complicit in the environmental destruction” is now taking the blame - She must be lamenting the world of people like that.

I wrote lyrics like “Once upon a time, the wolf was a god”, but I don’t care if the wolf was a god or not. Whether it’s about the West or the East doesn’t really matter. I just want to say that humans are the ones who have reduced the population of carnivorous animals called wolves, and there are ecosystems everywhere that have been thrown into disarray due to the decline of wolves (Will protecting and increasing the number of wolves solve the problem? No. Nature is not that simple).

In Japan, large-scale wolf hunting began due to the desire to “want wolf fur and skulls”, which was born out of a temporary religious movement; This gradually gave way to shooting for selfish reasons such as “wolves are attacking our livestock!”; Eventually, as humans began urban development, the resulting environmental destruction began, causing the wolves’ habitat to shrink and disappear.

As a result, due to the lack of predators and the overpopulation of deer, the forests were no longer able to maintain a harmonious state, and landslides were more likely to occur; Combined with factors such as abnormal weather, the number of monkeys, wild boars, and bears that do not have enough food is increasing, and the number of them descending on human settlements and attacking humans who come across them is increasing; Now, the “Extinction of wolves” is returning to the citizens as real harm. At least in Japan, that kind of “pay” is being paid.

There are other barbaric acts of humankind besides hunting down carnivorous animals. In the Amazon, there are people who destroy the ecosystem without caring about the ecosystem or the livelihoods of indigenous peoples. The Amazon’s environment destroyed in this way is having a negative impact on the Gulf of Guinea on the African continent and the steppes of the Eurasian continent. The large-scale fires in the grasslands of Mongolia and the floods in Pakistan are not separate phenomena, but are linked together; They are simply different types of abnormal weather occurring within the same swell.

The great Cosmos = Earth’s environment, which is the natural world, is being disturbed, and someone is mourning about it. These lyrics were like that.

However, as long as there are money-lovers who are making noises like “Will carbon credits become a new source of gold?!”, I don’t think there can be any hope for the human world. All I can do is accumulate small things and not want too much. Individuals are nothing more than very powerless beings.

And, well… there are other implications as well. Especially the second half. But I won’t write about it in depth. All I’ll leave you with is that when I was writing this song, I was just sad. And it continues even now.

I’m fed up with it, really. The whole thing is really frustrating…