A Japanese Island Where the Wild Things Are

Spirits are not otherworldly ghosts from a distant heaven or hell but are the very nature of the forest, earthed and grounded, connecting soil and imagination.

But the longer I stared at it, the less comprehensible the creature became. The more it became something alien to me, the more I had a sense that I knew nothing at all—about nature, about ecosystems. There was something about my mood and its dark glow that eclipsed sense, that made me see this creature, which had indeed been assigned a place in the

I think I realised quite a long time ago that the demon isn’t necessarily linked to God; it’s not the antithesis of human, or of the soul. It is just a different animal, which has a different diet to humans. I’ve heard of a crustacean that eats just the corneas of sharks, until the sharks are blinded, and butterflies in the Amazon that drink the te

“He was saying, ‘Bloody Japanese, out of here—I kill you!’ ” my guide said. This old man had never seen a foreigner before, and he thought I was a Japanese invading his village.