Daniela Kato PhD
I am an independent scholar, writer and educator based in Japan, with an academic background in the environmental humanities and training in ecotherapy.
After more than a decade of teaching and doing research on environmental literature and visual arts in academia, in 2021 I moved to a small village in northern Yamanashi, where I currently focus on projects of rural degrowth that weave together ecotherapy practice, the local folklore, food and landscape, crafts and foraging.
I am also an adjunct lecturer in sustainable education at Rikkyo University, Tokyo, and a guest tutor in ecotherapy at Tariki Trust, UK, where I offer online workshops that inspire international audiences to deepen their creative connection with the places where they live.
My research practice is arts-based and, through the lenses of autoethnography and storytelling, navigates the cross-pollinating hinterlands of folklore and mythology, the rural imagination and creative practices of place-making, with an emphasis on Japan and East Asia. I write regularly on these themes for The Dark Mountain Project, Garland Magazine and other venues, as well as offer talks and workshops at various schools and institutions.
Address: Hokuto, Yamanashi Pref., Japan
After more than a decade of teaching and doing research on environmental literature and visual arts in academia, in 2021 I moved to a small village in northern Yamanashi, where I currently focus on projects of rural degrowth that weave together ecotherapy practice, the local folklore, food and landscape, crafts and foraging.
I am also an adjunct lecturer in sustainable education at Rikkyo University, Tokyo, and a guest tutor in ecotherapy at Tariki Trust, UK, where I offer online workshops that inspire international audiences to deepen their creative connection with the places where they live.
My research practice is arts-based and, through the lenses of autoethnography and storytelling, navigates the cross-pollinating hinterlands of folklore and mythology, the rural imagination and creative practices of place-making, with an emphasis on Japan and East Asia. I write regularly on these themes for The Dark Mountain Project, Garland Magazine and other venues, as well as offer talks and workshops at various schools and institutions.
Address: Hokuto, Yamanashi Pref., Japan
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Papers by Daniela Kato PhD
Kemp and Yosano Akiko wrote, less than two decades apart, on
their journeys in Northeast China: The Face of Manchuria,
Korea and Russian Turkestan (1911) and Travels in Manchuria
and Mongolia (1928), respectively. Led by an interdisciplinary
exploration of critical theory in cultural translation, visual studies,
feminist geographies and postcolonial travel writing, it compares
and contrasts the distinct ways in which Kemp and Yosano
approach the ethics of the traveller/travellee encounter, the
aestheticisation of cultural difference in the colonial theatre as
well as the entangled relationship between the verbal and the
visual representations of travel and place, and thereby bear
witness to the storm of geopolitical change then sweeping the
region. While noting significant differences between the
circumstances of Kemp’s 1911 travelogue and Yosano’s 1928
account, the essay explores the ethical and affective implications
of their shifting positionalities in this particularly contested
contact zone.
Books by Daniela Kato PhD
Kemp and Yosano Akiko wrote, less than two decades apart, on
their journeys in Northeast China: The Face of Manchuria,
Korea and Russian Turkestan (1911) and Travels in Manchuria
and Mongolia (1928), respectively. Led by an interdisciplinary
exploration of critical theory in cultural translation, visual studies,
feminist geographies and postcolonial travel writing, it compares
and contrasts the distinct ways in which Kemp and Yosano
approach the ethics of the traveller/travellee encounter, the
aestheticisation of cultural difference in the colonial theatre as
well as the entangled relationship between the verbal and the
visual representations of travel and place, and thereby bear
witness to the storm of geopolitical change then sweeping the
region. While noting significant differences between the
circumstances of Kemp’s 1911 travelogue and Yosano’s 1928
account, the essay explores the ethical and affective implications
of their shifting positionalities in this particularly contested
contact zone.